Party in the House for Tony's toadies

Peter Hitchens

Last updated at 00:00 02 February 2003

NOW will you understand, all you gullible twerps who thought there was no risk in another Labour Government?

Or do you still not get it?

Anthony Blair has at last revealed what he means by a democratic House of Lords.

He means an appointed chamber of toadies, picked by a committee which has itself been appointed by . . .

guess who?

The plan was always to destroy the independence of the House of Lords. The attack on the hereditary peers was a fake from the very beginning, a power-grab dressed up as democracy.

As it happens, the Left have nothing against inherited power or dynasties or keeping things in the family look at North Korea, where power is handed from father to son, or Cuba, where it is planned to go from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul.

Closer to home there's the amazing Baroness Jay, whose father just happens to be Lord Callaghan.

Why should Labour be interested in democracy all of a sudden? This is a party that has destroyed the House of Commons by turning MPs into simpering robots. It now proposes to force women MPs on Labour voters whether they want them or not.

There are a million reasons why this repeated rape of the constitution matters. But perhaps the most frightening of all is that the House of Lords still has the legal power to cancel elections indefinitely. In the hands of Mr Blair's new House of Toadies, this is a very dangerous power indeed.