The latest tactics of the US is to target killings or arrest of murderous and tyrannical leaders of regimes that disrupt the peace or do serious harm.
Time was when some condemned the idea of targeting the commander or leader of an enemy regime, probably encouraged by their own commanders or leaders who did not favour retaliation. It has often been the case that successful killing of the enemy has led to peace. When Henry Tudor’s army killed Richard III that was the end of the War of the Roses. When Hitler killed himself recognising he was about to be captured that ended the 2 nd World War in Europe.
The ability of the US and its leading allies to kill leaders in hostile countries whilst protecting their own leaders does provide a relatively easy way of shortening wars and saving many lives. Should we welcome this development? Killing the Supreme leader of Iran who has authorised mass murder of his own people for daring to undertake peaceful protest requires a concentrated attack on him and his key helpers.
The EU leaders and the UK PM were an annoying irrelevance to relieving the brutality of the Iranian regime. They sheltered behind international law to ignore the voices of the suffering masses in Iran, and failed to see the need to find the quickest way to end the evil regime at minimum risk to the Iranian people. The assertion that the US acted illegally has not been backed up by proper legal argument. Is this international law view any better than the nonsense the government put forward to justify giving away Chagos?

Some reflections now I have had two weeks in the Lords in session. I have given my maiden speech, asked questions, intervened following a Statement and delivered a speech on growth and the EU re set.

My first impression is there is plenty to do. My working week when in session will include more than a standard 37 hours on Lords business including time in the chamber and committee, dealing with correspondence, talking to other peers,MPs and people seeking to influence public policy, reading to decide what to pursue and to offer policy advice, and to keep up to date with the wide ranging work of the revising chamber. Running this website is also relevant to what I will do in the Lords.

My second is that the Lords does do a lot of detailed useful work on legislation that needs doing. Tge Commons often is too busy to do all the detail and government often introduces lots of new material at the Lords stage.

My third is that when a government with a majority loses control of its own MPs or lacks clear direction and purpose the Lords has a more important advisory role, offering options and pushing back on bad compromises and temporary fixes grasped at by a sinking administration.

I remain wedded to the doctrine that the elected House should make all the big decisions and Manifesto measures approved by electors should be allowed to pass. As an MP there were times when I thought the Lords right to challenge a Conservative government over a non Manifesto measure or a bad response to new developments.The Commons need to ensure the Lords is not a better judge of the public mood or a better voter champion than elected MPs.

My criticism of the Lords then and now remains the same. There are too many peers who read out dull repetitious Establishment speeches. They use foolish, disproved and tired old soundbites to defend net zero, EU compliance, the tyranny of poorly performing “independent” bodies and strange interpretations of international law hostile to UK interests.The Lords for example should be interested in how the Bank of England presided over 11% inflation when it was meant to keep it to 2% and how it is now losing taxpayers £20 bn a year. Giving more speeches about the wonders of independence does not help.

The win of new pro Gaza Greens is bad news for Labour. It will mean Starmer’s MPs will intensify the pressure to spend more, borrow more and tax more and give in to the EU and foreign governments more. This will intensify the problems this government’s policies are causing. It will add to Labour’s unpopularity with most of us. They will prove beyond doubt that high taxes kill enterprise and jobs, spending more does not solve public sector management problems, and being nice to foreigners does not boost growth. It makes government financial stress more likely and condemns us to high youth unemployment.

I welcome the Government’s emphasis on growth and I look forward to future debates when we can exchange positive ideas on how to get more people into work, have better-paid jobs and extend investment in these islands. However, I must say to the Government that the measures currently being discussed, often in secret without proper text, are very worrying. They will either add nothing at all to our growth rate or, worse still, they will subtract from it and do damage. Look at what will happen to our fishing industry now that, for many more years, so much of the catch will be offered to continental super-trawlers and other vessels. This has delayed the rebuilding of the British fishing industry and means that we do not get all the inward investment and domestic investment in fish processing and food processing that would follow from having more catch landed in the United Kingdom.

Or look at the idea that we should join the carbon taxes and emissions scheme and the electricity scheme of the European Union. It would be another ratcheting up of the costs of electricity and energy in this country. Their carbon taxes are higher even than our high ones. Are not our carbon taxes doing enough damage already? Does the Front Bench opposite not see the factories closing and the plants being destroyed by ultra-high energy prices? Yet they want to volunteer for more of the same and take it out of our control.

If the Government decide to offer large new sums of money to the European Union, as they usually seem to when they visit Brussels, it will all be borrowed money. We are in a time of stress in our public finances; we are not looking for new ways to spend money. The more they spend giving it to Brussels, the more it will be resented by many people here in the United Kingdom and the more it will mean that those high levels of borrowing keep our interest rates above those of our competitors and stifle private investment and private growth, which is what we so clearly need.

We do not need to look forward, or even to forecast, to know what will happen with ever closer alignment to the European Union, because we have lived through it. In the 20 years that elapsed before we joined the European Economic Community, our economy grew at 3.4% per year: a very good rate of growth. In the 20 years of our early membership when we were a member of the European customs union, until the full single market was declared in 1992, our growth rate slumped to 1.76%. Of course it did, because we took all the tariffs off the things that the European continent was good at and just watched as it laid waste to so much of our industry, with all those closures, and we did not get the market opening on the services that drive the success of our economy. So of course that is what happened.

If you then roll the camera forward to our years in the single market, from 1992 to 2020, our growth rate fell again, even compared with the poor performance when we were just in the customs union. Again, of course it did, because of the anti-innovation, high-cost spirit of so many of those regulations. The last thing we need for a growth strategy now is more laws made in Europe. We know that they do not work; we know that they slow us down. Why do we want to link to the part of the world that is growing so slowly, when our great friends and allies in the United States of America are growing at twice the pace of the European Union? We seem to be negative about them and positive about joining the slow lane. We should not want to join the slow lane. This set of negotiations is bad for Britain and bad for growth.

Governments like setting themselves targets to give people a sense of direction and to demonstrate progress. This government is particularly keen on them. The art of good target setting is
1. Identify a real problem where more effort and resource can improve things
2, Set a stretching but achievable target
3. Put in the extra resource and leadership
4. Get public service buy in to success by showing how the target is being met and is popular with the public.

This government is finding it difficult to meet its key targets or even get us going in the same direction as the target.
The target to smash the gangs has never been in sight as numbers arriving increased under the new government. Their policy actually ditched changes the last government had made but had not fully implemented which would have brought down illegal migration faster than it was falling when Labour took over.

The target to build 1.5 million new homes is never going to be met this Parliament, and the policy of speeding planning permissions did not tackle the main reasons for poor housebuilding numbers. Taxing the economy into slowdown did not help.

The target to take £300 off people’s energy bills was not going to be hit because more renewables which the government keeps adding are dearer. Getting a modest reduction in bills next quarter by shifting some of the costs onto general taxation is a fiddle, not a win. We still have to pay dearer bills but some of it is taken out of increased taxes.

The target to cut NHS waiting lists has led to some reductions mainly by removing the dead, the recovered, the double counted from the lists, not by more throughput and treatment of patients. Whilst it makes sense to get more accurate lists it is not what was implied by a target to reduce waiting. People are still waiting too long who need treatment and there are still too few treatments and consultations.

The education target seeks to reduce the gap between the best and worst performing children. Surely the target we want is one to raise the performance and opportunities of those who are not doing well. This government’s target could be advanced by cutting resources and effort to teach those who are doing well to bring their achievement down to closer to the average. This would not be a good outcome.

The main reason the US has been and is growing at twice the rate of the EU and the UK is its leadership in the digital revolution. The US has produced all the dominant western companies in software, mobile phones and pads, search, on line shopping, cloud storage, social media and complex chip production. The EU and UK just have to use these US services, and allow the US corporations to set up this side of the Atlantic to serve the customers.

Out of the EU the UK now has a bit less onerous regulatory regime than the EU for innovatory digital business, and has a growing cluster of smaller digital success stories which we need to build on. So I was dismayed to read recently that some in the UK government see the wish for large corporations to invest in many more large data centres in the UK as bad news. They apparently are arguing that these centres would require too much electricity and water which they do not want to supply so we should say No.

This is the ultimate madness. Far from saving the planet it just means we would need to link to overseas centres where the extra energy and water would still be used. If the government was serious about renewable power being able to answer all our problems they would get on and provide it by commissioning far more they have to date. If they were more realistic and worried about costs and reliability they will get on and put in some additional new efficient gas fired power stations alongside replacement nuclear for our soon to close stations and more wind and sun powered plant. Controlling migration properly would also help, reducing the number of extra people that will need power as well the extra business demand.

We are short of water which is also silly in a country with plenty of rainfall. New reservoirs are urgently needed for existing growing demand let alone for the new data centres. Just get on with it.

More data centre investment can drive more growth in energy and water supply. That is the way you grow a modern economy. Why stay limping along in the EU slow lane when we can join the new data super highway to prosperity?

Elected governments usually appoint to all the most powerful roles in government from amongst their elected MPs, recognising the need for them to be answerable to the House of Commons and for their words and deeds to have the legitimacy of an elected mandate. MPs can get even more angry if a senior Minister is in the Lords at a time when the policy is going wrong. A Minister in the Lords has to be represented by a Commons Minister for questions, statements and bill work in the Commons Chamber, but can be summonsed by MPs in Select Committee to explain themselves when needed. Most Lords Ministers in internal government and Ministerial discussions defer to their elected Commons colleagues, and are sensitive to the priority given to the views of those who have been elected.
It is also true that PMs do wish to bring some talent and special knowledge into Ministerial ranks, and do so by inviting people to become Ministers in the Lords. Margaret Thatcher for example appointed David Young as a Cabinet Minister and part of the economic team for his skills in business. In the present government the PM has chosen Lord Hermer, a lawyer friend, to be Attorney General and to attend Cabinet. He is one of the most powerful Ministers in the government using his access to the PM to influence policy generally and using his legal supervision to intervene in a very wide range of other issues and other Ministers’ activities. Baroness (Angela) Smith as Leader of the Lords is a Cabinet member, consulted on a wide range of issues relating to the passage of government business through the second chamber. She is also a senior Minister of State in the DWP giving that department effectively two cabinet seats. Baroness Chapman is Minister of State in the Foreign Office responsible for Overseas Aid which has in the past been a separate department and is an important command. Lord Vallance has been brought in as Minister for Science and in the Energy Department for his bureaucratic and scientific expertise and presumably is very influential in those crucial areas. At Education Baroness (Jacqui) Smith as a Minister of State brings previous experience as Home Secretary and will doubtless be consulted on a range of important issues beyond her immediate brief. She sometimes is asked to do general interviews for the government on difficult days. Lord Timpson as Minister of State for Prisons probably has wide ranging powers to reform and direct prisons policy and management given his past experience and views. Lord Hanson, a former senior MP, may get a fair hearing at the Home Department and will not lack opinions. Lord Hendy at Transport was brought in for his past experience in senior management roles in public transport, so he will wield considerable influence over rail policy. Lord Coaker is respected in defence fields where he is a Minister of State. Lady Levitt is recently appointed and a junior Minister, but as the former legal adviser to Keir Starmer when he was Head of the CPS may have access and influence on legal matters.
Where a senior Minister of State in the Lords effectively has delegated power from the Secretary of State to make policy and direct an important part of a department, Lords scrutiny becomes particularly important. It is in the Lords that the important Minister can be questioned and required to report more fully. Many Lords Ministers are junior Ministers and rely on departmental briefings when they have to report and defend the actions of Commons Ministers to the Lords. The exchanges in the Lords mainly rehearse arguments the Commons controls, and the junior Minister can only report back to the boss the Lords criticisms.
It may be that some other Lords Ministers do wield important influence behind the scenes, but so do civil servants, lobbyists and others. The accountable person is rightly the most powerful Minister who will usually be in the Commons. Lords Ministers have to be aware that their conduct will be subject to Lords scrutiny and discipline.

I know some of you think the Lords should be abolished, and some think it should be elected. Let me explain my views as a member of it, views which I developed early as an MP when I had no expectation of joining it.
I do not think it a good idea to have a second elected chamber. If it were elected at the same time as the first it would likely have a similar composition. There is no point in duplication of what we have got. If it were elected at a different time there could be a very different composition, leading to endless rows between the two houses and making effective government extremely difficult. It is already difficult for a government with a Commons majority to govern, so why set out to create a stand off or log jam on any new proposal? There would presumably need to be fixed terms for both chambers to ensure they did get elected at different times.
I do not think it a good idea to abolish it. The Lords can provide a useful check on a Commons majority that makes ill thought through or too crudely political decisions. It can usefully revise Commons draft legislation to help the government achieve the result it has set. It can provide a means of bringing additional talent and expertise into Ministerial office.
The Lords should of course be subject to review and reform. I supported the introduction of a retirement provision which has allowed some elderly peers to give up their work as legislators. I support the need for peers to attend to assist the House in its work, unless granted leave of absence for illness or to take up some other important role for a bit.
The main issue is what powers do the Lords have and should they have. The current settlement is embedded in the constitutional Act of 1949, the Parliament Act. This amended the 1911 Act. These Acts assert the rightful supremacy of the Commons in financial matters, and allow the Commons majority to secure passage of any Bill they want after argument between the two Houses on contentious matters. Usually the Lords and Commons come to an agreement on amendments to bills after some exchanges over Lords amendments. If they cannot reach a compromise then the Commons has to wait a year and can then pass the Act it originally wanted without the Lords amendments, without the Lords intervening. This rarely happens, and was last used to let the Commons put through the Hunting Act 2004 after delay. This seems to me to be a sensible settlement. It is an observed convention that the Lords always let the Commons secure a Bill which implements a Manifesto promise. The Lords in these instances recognises the right of the Commons to legislate even when wrong, and accepts the Lords cannot insist on being right.

We have long known Mr Windsor behaved badly as Prince Andrew by choosing Epstein as a friend and being too close to a convicted paedophile. The King rightly stripped him of royal duties and titles.

Over the last week Mr Windsor, no longer a working royal, has been interviewed under caution by the police. The big story will be when the police bring charges of a criminal offence or announce they are not bringing charges. Until we know the outcome there is no significant news.

Yet with obvious government encouragement the media goes on and on about the need for reform of the monarchy and behave as if Mr Windsor is an important and powerful person when he has been removed from all public roles.

It looks as if the government aided by the BBC want to spend most time on this to bury or downplay much more important and urgent stories.

1. The huge tax hit reported in the latest figures and the damage this is doing to jobs, business and net incomes
2.The refusal of the Chancellor to use the Spring Statement to launch a proper growth strategy or to get the cost of living under control by new policies on energy, Council taxes, motoring costs and the rest
3.The disgraceful and expensive give away of the Chagos islands
4. The UK refusal to help the US to put pressure on the murderous Iranian regime
5.The dreadful EU re set deal and the Gibraltar deal where no texts are made available to the UK Parliament and people
6.The continuing failure to tackle the rape gangs seriously
7.The continuing refusal to make the legal changes necessary to smash the gangs and stop illegal migration.

Note how there is so much discussion of Mr Windsor but much less of Mr Mandelson. Those MPs who want a more transparent royal family should start by early and comprehensive publication of the Mandelson papers as demanded by the Commons.

Normally I would welcome a better government surplus in January, the one month each year when tax exceeds spending by the government. The Treasury is claiming credit and implying it is doing well on spending. If only. The figures show the surplus is all down to a massive tax hit on the UK economy. Total tax revenue this January was 13.8% higher than January last year, or 10.8% up in real terms after allowing for 3% inflation. VAT receipts were flat because people are so squeezed by the taxes they are not buying so many discretionary items that attract VAT.
The reason I think these numbers should ring alarm bells, not celebratory peals of joy, is they mean less growth, fewer jobs, and a smaller economy next year to try to pay for the ever expanding public sector. Tax on jobs was well up. The results are there to see in rising unemployment and mass unemployment for young people, priced out of the market by high National Insurance and Business rates. Tax on self assessment incomes is well up. Some of that is making more people pay not just last year’s tax but also 50% of their estimate of this year’s on top, so the figures contain a one off of more than one year of tax. Some of it is taxing hard work, extra jobs and savings incomes, which is driving more people to end their small businesses, to emigrate to lower tax countries, or to give up some of their activities. Capital Gains tax is well up. Some of that will be the stream of wealthier people rushing to the exit cashing in their expensive homes and selling stakes in their businesses, so they will be one off profits for the Treasury. Tax on incomes is well up as more and more people get dragged into higher tax bands and need to pay a much higher rate on their pay award.
There is no sign of spending slowing down. The government is rushing to give more away, as with the £35 bn over the longer term to Mauritius for Chagos, the £20 bn a year of unacceptable Bank of England losses on bad bond trading, the continuing surge in sicknotes for life adding greatly to the long term benefits bill, and the ballooning subsidies for renewable energy and the forced electric revolution.
The high tax strategy has delivered a rare good month for the public finances at the cost of more damage to the economy in the months ahead. Next comes more regular tax payments from small businesses, hitting their cashflow. With then higher business rates and lethal National Insurance it means there will be more small businesses closing down and fewer new jobs from this vital sector. The government is still creating and pushing its doomloop. It hates the private sector and thinks it can tax it and tax it again without people leaving and businesses closing. They need to listen to those of us who have seen this from previous Labour governments and do not want them to go the same road to misery and defeat.