The Lords list and the rise of British corruption

It’s a satirist’s dream. Imagine being a foreign writer working on a novel about modern Britain, the country that voted for its own decline with Brexit, elected as Prime Minister someone most other leaders around the world view as half comic, half danger, who talks the talk of great world-class success in managing the Covid crisis, when the only actual world-beating outcome has been the excess death rate.

Then imagine, just as the writer’s block is starting to set in, that said writer checks out the news, and stumbles across the list of nominations for elevation (sic) to the House of Lords. The satirical creative juices will gush once more.

Some highlights—

Barely a week after the Parliamentary committee with oversight for national security warned of the damage to the UK done by the Russian oligarchy’s entry into London life, Boris Johnson trolls them again, with a peerage for his favourite party host, newspaper-owning oligarch Evgeny Lebedev.

Lebedev is not the only media figure to be made a peer. He will be joined by Charles Moore, former editor of the Telegraph, which played such a central role in Johnson’s rise to the top of the Tory Party, and Veronica Wadley, who propagandised slavishly for Johnson when she was editor of the Evening Standard.

Lest anyone should think Johnson gives two hoots about criticisms of nepotism and cronyism, there is one for his brother Jo. Dad Stanley and sister Rachel, if only they can temper their occasional criticisms of the most useless government in living memory, must surely be close behind. (Might he even try to tempt some of his estranged children with a bit of ermine to put an end to the “No Speaks” caused by his treatment of their mothers?)

A list now of the other former Tory MPs, whose political skills and experience are deemed to be so great as to be required for the continued effective governance of the nation. Ken Clarke. Tick. Philip Hammond and Sir Patrick McLoughlin. Well, at least they have considerable experience as Cabinet ministers. As for the rest, if you have heard of them all, you are either John Bercow, or the former Tory chief whip, soon to be Lord McLoughlin. Sir (services to Lord knows what) Henry Bellingham. Nicholas Herbert CBE (they do so love a gong), Ed Vaizey. Lorraine Fullbrook. John Lancaster. James Wharton. (Apparently Lancaster and Wharton were ministers!) From the Thatcher government we got Lords Tebbit and Heseltine; from Johnson’s, Lancaster and Wharton.

With Johnson, the cronyism is not limited to Commons rejects. There is a peerage for Aamer Sarfraz, venture capitalist and, what else, Treasurer of the Tory Party; and if you can get away with a peerage for one Treasurer, why not try for two? Step forward former Party Treasurer, major donor, billionaire Michael Spencer. There is one for Andrew Sharpe OBE, chairman of the National Conservative Convention. Then one for someone I always thought was Eddie Lister, but who in the list is named as Sir Edward Udny-Lister, former deputy Mayor of London under — well, have a guess.

Then there are what might nominally be called the Labour Five, in that they were all Labour MPs. Kate Hoey, Gisela Stuart, Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Frank Field. The men among them are essentially being rewarded for having helped Johnson defeat his Labour opponent. As for the women, I have a very distinct memory of sharing a Brexit debate platform with Gisela Stuart, and her trotting out the usual lines about the whole thing being necessary so that our elected representatives could take back control from unelected Brussels bureaucrats supposedly calling the shots on our lives. I wonder if Hoey and Stuart, having been such loud cheerleaders for the Farageiste cause, see the slightest irony, or have the slightest shame, at their exits from the elected Commons being followed so soon after by appointment by a right-wing Prime Minister as unelected legislators in the unelected Lords.

And then there’s Lord Beefy. Now as it happens, Ian Botham is a pal of mine. He is the only pal I have who calls me “Campo.” We have done charity stuff together, and socialised together, and he is an amusing, lively, entertaining, very right wing bloke who was also very very good at cricket. He has many qualities, but I am not convinced they will lead to him being an effective legislator.

All of the above are deemed by Johnson to be worthier of a seat in the Lords than former Speaker John Bercow who, whatever else anyone wants to think or say of him, has huge experience and understanding of Parliament. His cardinal sin however was to stand up for Parliament rather than merely to speak up for Johnson. Johnson being prone both to petulance and cronyism, he was always going to block Bercow. But this list is also about showing anyone who thinks their skills might be genuinely suited to a life in the Lords, that ability is the last thing on the list of characteristics Johnson deems necessary.

Older readers may remember the scandal of the so-called Lavender List, the name given to Harold Wilson’s resignation honours of 1976. Johnson’s list makes Wilson’s look tame by comparison.

What we are living through, day in, day out, with both politics and media failing fully to understand or to adapt, is the normalisation of the kind of corruption we have for decades condemned in others.