It may be unavoidable that constitutional reform is a question of low politics – but there has to be internal consistency
The draft Lords reform bill is promised within the next fortnight. Its return to the political frontline is both overdue and inauspicious. It sets off with the drawback of looking like a consolation prize for Nick Clegg after the AV disaster. That makes it easy for Labour (as well as the Conservatives) to obstruct. Ed Miliband is already indicating that without a commitment to a 100% elected upper chamber, it is unacceptable. He should leave room for manoeuvre. But Mr Clegg starts on the back foot.
If Lords reform were easy, it would have been done long ago. It is harder now than ever. Most Tory MPs don't care for it while nearly all peers will need their fingers forcibly prising off their delightful bars and libraries. Resistance is hardening; questions are being raised about the rights, at a time of coalition, of the Commons against the Lords. Labour has argued that it extinguishes the Salisbury convention, which gives bills based on manifesto commitments a safe passage. That would make it impossible to use it to impose reform. The counter-argument, that taken together the coalition partners won a greater share of the vote than any recent majority government, might be true but lacks the weight of precedent. Meanwhile, David Cameron has made reform (which he notoriously called "a third-term issue") even more difficult by creating new peers at double the previous fastest rate. There are now 830 entitled to sit in the bloated second chamber, and at the moment only the grim reaper can thin their number. Allowing peers to retire would be a sensible advance; so would excluding serial absentees, and those sentenced to more than a year in prison, as David Steel recently suggested. But it will not be enough.
The experience of the past 10 years shows how important it is that short-term change supports rather than cuts across longer-term reform. Since the abolition of the hereditaries, the Lords has become steadily more assertive. Packing the house in theory gives the coalition a de facto majority, but there have already been more successful revolts – 16 – in this parliament than in the final year of the last. And although there are complaints about ex-Labour MPs importing their tribal customs, and reports that the cross-benchers are getting stroppy too, the big rebellions this week, on fixed-term parliaments and elected police commissioners, suggest it is the newly muscular Lib Dems who are resuming their pre-coalition role as the swing vote.
Securing legislation that would deprive them of their jobs is going to entail an all-out war (there are some who want to see it forced through with the Parliament Act), and that could jeopardise all other government business. This week, Mr Clegg talked of MPs and peers working together on a joint committee, starting by agreeing a way of whittling the Lords down to 200 in the next five years and completing reform by 2025. His words sit oddly with his defence of the creation of new peers, which he says is part of a rebalancing to reflect share of the vote – a rebalancing that has nearly trebled Lib Dems' Lords representation in the past year.
It may be unavoidable that constitutional reform is a question of low politics – but there has to be some internal consistency. To add to the mess, Mr Clegg – anxious to have a saleable commodity – seems willing to accept that up to a fifth of the new upper house might be appointed. He should think more carefully about previous attempts at reaching a universally acceptable solution. No concession will make an elected upper house acceptable to some MPs and peers. Right now, it is beginning to look like a rerun of the AV debacle, with the Lib Dems sinking political capital into an imperfect compromise, and facing probable defeat. The coalition's constitutional ambitions are beginning to look worryingly more like political novelty than new politics.