Like many people, I went through a phase of being very interested in the Titanic. Why has the disaster exerted such fascination? Perhaps it’s the hubris caused by the “unsinkable” claim: although I now learn that the ship was only claimed to be unsinkable after it sank. The fact that Wikipedia has a whole section devoted to “legends and myths” about the ship shows just how the stories around it have grown.

For me, the most haunting aspect was the idea of this vast thing, with all its passengers, staircases, trombones, tuxedos and caviar, just suddenly vanishing into the unimaginable depths as if it had never been: the revenge of a pitiless and indifferent planet to our dreams of grandeur –and on its maiden voyage, too. When the wreck was re-discovered I, probably like everyone else, was gripped by a morbid fascination which re-awakened all my childhood memories of reading about it.

The disaster has also given us several phrases: the band played on, women and children first, the tip of the iceberg, rearranging the deckchairs and, of course, (in an ironical sense) unsinkable. My favourite remark about it was made decades later by Lou Grade: “it would,” he said, referring to the vast financial loss made by his 1980 movie Raise the Titanic, “have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.” Those who attempted to rescue the Titan may well be feeling the same.

• Morbid fascination is probably a good way to describe Partygate, which continues to unravel. The latest casualty is London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey whose staff hosted a Christmas gathering in 2020. The  event was first exposed in December 2021 but more damning evidence in the form of a video has recently emerged. Bailey himself has apologised, saying of the event that “it obviously turned into something once I’d left, I didn’t realise that.”

Really? The theme – jingle and mingle, which was helpfully printed on the invite – might have given him a clue. If he didn’t bother to flearn what took place perhaps it’s just as well he didn’t become Mayor. To compensate him for this disappointment, he has since been given a peerage and his campaign manager Ben Mallet, an OBE. There are calls for these and indeed all of Boris Johnson’s resignations honours to be rescinded.

• If the Labour Party gets elected then all peers, deserving or otherwise, may become an endangered species. The BBC reports that the opposition “has insisted it still wants to abolish the House of Lords, despite planning to increase its size by creating new peers if it wins the next election.” It needs to ennoble 90 more people, each of whom would need to agree to back abolition, to create a sufficient majority. A couple of years ago, I wrote A constitutional elephant: a quick look at the House of Lords and considered some of the strange facts about this institution. Perhaps the most remarkable conclusion was that many attempts have been made to reform the Lords but none have succeeded in doing much more than tinkering with it.

Now, Sir Kier has dug out his elephant gun and promised to have a pop at this rogue animal himself. His plan of attack is laid out in clauses 37 to 39 of A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy which was, I understand, largely authored by Gordon Brown. This makes the statement, twice, that the Lords is “indefensible”. In fact, however, many have mounted effective defences of its strange composition and functions: although, it must be admitted, the main reason for its survival is that it’s too difficult to agree what should replace it.

These forces of inertia are mustering again. The BBC quotes Lord Speaker Lord McFall as arguing for reform rather than abolition. A labour spokesperson has admitted that the process might be staggered with some “interim reforms.” Tory MP Sir Simon Clarke, has described Lords abolition as a “terrible idea.” Lord Mandelson has warned that, “without agreement from other parties, Labour’s plans risk dragging the party into a “quagmire”, soaking up “acres of time and energy” that would be better spent on other priorities.” In other words, as Hilaire Belloc put it, “Always keep a-hold of Nurse/For fear of finding something worse.” 

The document then goes on to say that the second chamber it envisages would “safeguard the new constitutional basis of the New Britain.” I don’t know what either of these phrases mean. The fact that the second “New” is capitalised suggests “New Britain” is a thing, like “New Improved Daz” or “New Labour.” But what sort of thing? The next paragraph goes into a bit more detail, saying that it will “ensure that the constitutional limits on government power are obeyed, that power is truly shared with the devolved legislatures and across England, and give voice explicitly to the different nations and regions of the United Kingdom.” It will, in fact, be “an Assembly of the Nations and Regions.”

This title, which has about as much zip as the small-print of a parking ticket, also contrives to make the new body seem uncomfortably similar to the China’s National People’s Congress which the Lords increasingly resembles as regards its size. Hopefully, future plans will provide more detail. One point is repeated in the next section, that Lords2, as I shall call it, should have “a new role of safeguarding the UK constitution.” The problem is that there is no UK constitution, just a hotchpotch of convention, statute law, judicial decisions and whatever happens to be expeditious at the time.

So, are we to have a written constitution? If so, who will draft it? That seems to be the bigger question. It’s very hard to safeguard something that doesn’t exist. Already, before it has even come into being, Lords2 has been handed an impossible task.

Strings are attached as well.  This new responsibility will be “subject to an agreed procedure that sustains the primacy of the House of Commons.” So, if the House of Commons violates the constitution, however defined, Lords2 has no power because the Commons has primacy. As regards the two big details, the document has this to say: “the precise composition and method of election [will be] matters for consultation.” All in all, I’m not sure that we’re much further forward.

Aside from my perhaps slightly catty remarks made above (perhaps unfairly as this is only a first draft), there seem to be four big problems with realising the ambitions of this document (which go further than just creating lords2).

The first is the fact that the government and representation of the UK is an utter muddle. Scotland, Wales and (when they can agree) Northern Ireland have their own parliaments. England does not, a situation shared only by the Vatican City in Europe. Until this can be resolved, an organisation which ensures “that power is truly shared with the devolved legislatures” will only make this contradiction worse.

Secondly, the document has much to say about local government, talking about “greater long-term financial certainty”,  “new fiscal powers” and “new economic partnerships.” However, the prevailing attitude of central government towards councils for as long as I can recall is one of distrust. (I put this very point to former WBC Leader Lynne Doherty last week. She suggested that, with particular reference to the pandemic, “it was not so much a lack of trust as a lack of understanding…in time they understood we were often better placed to do and our feedback was acted on.” She may well be right: but if so, I wonder if lack of understanding would be an even more egregious failing by Whitehall.)

The Labour Party’s A New Britain makes her point in a different way: “When Covid hit, our faulty wiring was exposed, with central government and local government too often at odds with each other and local leaders rightly complaining that centrally imposed uniform decisions were not founded on an accurate understanding of local needs.” Lynne Doherty led a Conservative administration. If a Tory local-council Leader and a Labour former PM can express virtually identical sentiments, we would seem to be looking at something approaching cross-party consensus. Until this problem is fixed, it’s hard to see that the reforms would produce anything useful. Unfortunately, history provides very few examples of people or institutions voluntarily ceding power.

Thirdly, the nascent plans for Lords2 talk of “power [being] truly shared with the devolved legislatures and across England.” These would act to cement geographical divisions. What seems more useful would be something that reflects interests rather than location. For example, a lot of people feel that more influence should be given to bio-diversity and climate change in our decision-making. Others feel equally strongly about inequality and social justice. Having, as the document implies, the determining factor being the area you’re in, these considerations will be subsumed by regional or national interests. Points of view which transcend these divisions will be under-represented.

This leads to my fourth objection, the spectre of proportional representation. Only this can enable views not based on local concerns or conventional political loyalties to be represented. To have this for Lords2 would, however, be to admit it might make sense for the Commons. The two large parties would rather put their heads in a vice.

• Right, onto more important things: the Ashes. What a game the first test was. I’d rather see England loose playing like this than watch a plodding draw or a grinding win. The weather played an important part, reducing the number of overs to an extent that happily produced a nail-biting finale on the last day, and some unwelcome conditions at the start of England’s second innings, which speeded the match along to its dramatic conclusion. So too did Ben Stokes’ surprising declaration with England 393-8 and with a centurion at the crease.

If this match doesn’t make people fall in love with test cricket then I don’t know what will. Football is the sport that gets my pulse racing: but five-day cricket is longer and more subtle drug. I understand that there are also other sports available. None are in the same league as these two.

• Still with sport, former Manchester United player Gary Neville has called on the Premier League “to stop the transfer of players to Saudi Arabia until it is certain the integrity of its competition is not being put at risk.” I agree with his ethical point but football is, as is so much else, a commercial entity.

Money is a very pure firm of motivation. Saudi Arabia has a lot of it and has decided it wants to create one of the top leagues in the world by buying some great players most of whom are at or beyond their sell-by dates. By that logic, no players should be able to be bought by PSG, Celtic or Bayern as their dominance of their leagues does more to put its competitions at risk than any moral judgements.  Even if they could be implemented, these form no part of the thinking of football’s administrators. They’re running a business. The Saudi experiment is just more sportswashing and should be treated with the contempt that it deserves.

• The Covid enquiry continues, with the main theme so far – expressed by a number of politicians – being lack of preparation. This can’t have been due to the lack of dummy runs, like Exercise Cygnus. There’ll be plenty more coming out about this. At present we’re only a few hundred yards into a marathon. The procedure for awarding PPE contracts are still some way in the future but their time will come.

• I shall end with the ghastly conclusion of Boris Johnson’s political career: or perhaps, given his capacity for recovery, of this part of it. The vote to approve the findings of the select committee’s report into whether he misled the Commons over partygate was passed by 354 to seven. The veteran Bill Cash made a speech during the debate that was a masterpiece of sophistry, essentially arguing that as no one had managed to understand exactly how the rules applied then it was impossible to say that BoJo had misled the House as to whether he’s broken them.

Bill Cash is a lawyer, so allowances should be made. Even so, this ignores the fact that the then PM had set the rules and announced them; and that there was a moral question involved. Cash’s arguments also amounted to a dismissal of the long work of the committee which was in the final stages of its work conducted against an awful barrage of intimidation by the subject of the enquiry. The result of the investigation, and the vote, has shown that Boris Johnson is a bully, a liar and manipulatively ambitious. Do not, therefore, rule out his re-election as PM at some future date…

Across the area