Instead of frustrating Ministers, can’t the House of Lords just work with them?
IMMIGRATION into this country is now at a record high.
As I mentioned here the other day, on current trends net migration this year will soon be almost twice that at the height of the Blair years.
This poses challenges for everyone in this country. From housing and crime to the economy and employment.
The Government is trying to get to grips with the problem.
But the critics they forever come up against are completely unrepresentative of the public.
Poll after poll shows the public want immigration into this country to be reduced. Yet critic after critic lines up to claim that the Government is doing too much.
One such blast came from the Archbishop of Canterbury this week.
In a speech in the House of Lords, Justin Welby condemned Government efforts to curb illegal migration.
That is, he condemned efforts to stop the movement of tens of thousands of people into this country via illegal small boats in the Channel.
Remember that this didn’t use to be a problem. For decades we have been able to recognise the difference between legal and illegal migration.
But Archbishop Welby thinks he knows better. He condemned the Government’s proposals as “isolationist, morally unacceptable and politically impractical”.
I don’t know when Welby became such an expert on migration that he could declare a policy “politically impractical”.
Nor does it make any sense to condemn the policy as “isolationist”.
Britain is taking in more illegal migrants per head than almost any other country I can think of.
And this is isolationist? Really?
But the most striking thing was that claim of the Government doing something “morally unacceptable”.
From an archbishop — of Canterbury, no less — such claims can sting.
After this week’s debate, Welby took to social media to say that “Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger”.
Which is true. Up to a point. Because as one wag pointed out this week, God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for eating an apple.
But what about there being some consequences for someone who has broken into the Garden of England only to do things far worse than steal an apple?
Of course, the Government is a bit tied up here. Because there is a limited amount it can do in the face of such criticism.
It is stuck with the bishops in the House of Lords, as are we all.
Indeed they — and we — are all stuck with an Upper House which is a chamber with some serious problems. Watch any debate in the Lords and you will be amazed at what goes on.
If you can stay awake, you might very occasionally hear a speech of some brilliance. But, by and large, the House is dominated by the bottom rung of British political life.
Those people who are put into the House who have achieved something tend not to turn up to debates.
They have work to do — the sort of work that got them put there in the first place.
But the result is that the Lords’ debates are packed with the ghosts of failed careers past.
People like lunatic Lib Dems who never even made it in the paddling pool of their own parliamentary party.
One of those who contributed to the immig-ration debate this week was Brian Paddick.
He even tried to push through an amendment to the bill that would have effectively scuppered the thing.
Speaking from a pretend position of enormous experience, Lord Paddick claimed efforts to stop the small-boat crossings were “all pain and no gain”, and said: “This is a question of principle.”
You could be forgiven if you don’t remember who Paddick is.
He was a very liberal, political policeman who was not especially good at his job and, as a result, was put into the House of Lords by the Lib Dems — via an embarrassing stint on that vital platform for political discourse, I’m A Celebrity.
And there he sits, with hundreds of others like him. Able to frustrate the Government. Able to insult and condemn the Government.
But rarely, if ever, capable of actually working with the Government to solve issues that the public wants to see solved.
The only reason the House of Lords exists in the half-formed bastardised version that it does is that nobody knows how to make it better.
On the one hand, it could become another elected chamber. But then it would be even more of a House of Commons for losers than it already is.
The bishops could be cleared out, but if you clear them out then why not get rid of all the party donors and others there for less defensible reasons than being a bishop?
And that’s before you even get started on the people — now as young as in their twenties — who are getting shoved in there because they happened to work for one of the prime ministers our country now burns through at such a rate.
The House of Lords in its current guise survives because people think any reform would be worse.
After this week, you wonder how much worse it could be.
TRUMP VERSUS CHUMP
LEFT-wing CNN has gone into meltdown in the US. Because of a ratings success!
The channel hosted a widely watched “town hall” event on Wednesday with Donald Trump.
Given that he is the frontrunner to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president next year, you’d have thought this would be par for the course.
Not so. CNN’s few loyal viewers, plus presenters on rival channels, slammed CNN for giving a “platform” to Trump.
As though the former president might other-wise be a figure of obscurity.
The funny thing about this is that CNN did nothing new. TV channels of all stripes used to have candidates on air all the time.
There, they were questioned, challenged and given a chance to outline their platforms.
If CNN is now feeling wounded, it is because of two things.
First, the fact Trump won over the assembled crowd despite some clear problems with the things he was saying.
Second, that the journalist questioning him failed to land the blows she had clearly hoped to land. Now her colleagues are rightly trying to rally around her.
New York Congress-woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a famously vocal critic of Trump, was even moved to tweet: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves . . . the audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”
But what do these media luvvies think their job is, exactly?
I should think it is to question candidates and let the public decide what they think of them.
American leftists, by contrast, seem to think that their role is to be the gatekeepers of acceptable opinion, the censors of opinions they do not like, and the final decider of who should be president.
No wonder they seem so pleased with themselves.
WATCH THAT BANANA SKIN, MINISTER
BACK in the 1990s one of the biggest stories about the European Union was their desire to regulate our bananas.
Eurosceptics said the EU was trying to stop us having bendy bananas.
Europhiles denied the allegation and claimed only they were being straight with us.
So it is interesting that, as The Sun reported this week, the Government’s bonfire of EU red tape will not cover any banana issues.
Personally, I think this is a mistake. We need to heal the divisions of Brexit.
Certainly we don’t need another banana split.
Why is it all right to knock ‘white’ royals?
IMAGINE if anyone criticised a person or a family for being “terribly black”.
If they said it in modern Britain, the whole world would fall down around them.
And yet say that a family is “terribly white” and you will suffer no bad consequences.
So it is with Adjoa Andoh, who plays Bridgerton’s Lady Danbury, after she was invited to join ITV’s Coronation coverage.
The deeply entitled-seeming actress made the observation when talking about the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Ofcom have received thousands of complaints, making it the most complained about moment of TV this year.
Yet so far not a word from ITV. Did it think this OK?
I just don’t get the desire some people have to introduce race into everything.
To suggest that there is something bad and wrong and boring about being white.
Many people find this kind of talk offensive.
And a great many more of us are just thoroughly bored of it.