Recently this column reported, with a touch of asperity, from the Lords. Yesterday, despite being shouted at en route by a power-crazed policeman and some tiresome tusker of a doorkeeper, I revisited the Upper House to check I had not been unkind to the old boobies.
Many of the same figures were there, saying similar things. Maybe they'd been there all the time, fossils placed under dust-sheets at night. The chamber was full for daily question time. They pile in after subsidised lunch. Daily attendance allowance: £361 plus £125 for your overnight charpoy.
Lib Dem hereditary Lord Addington, 62, a backbencher for 40 years, was taking a portly post-nosebag snooze. Former Defence Secretary Des Browne, 73, was more seriously asleep, bent almost in two. Near him was the spectral form of Jack Cunningham, 86, once Jim Callaghan's parliamentary aide. Also Paul Boateng, sometime peppery lawyer, Treasury minister and High Commissioner to South Africa. On Monday I heard him in the committee looking at that China 'spies' scandal. Theatrical, partisan bluster. Lord Boateng, 74, has not yet grown out of it.
Lady Sherlock, a gesticulating gasbag from the pensions department, said the point of work was that it provided 'self-respect, teamwork, a peer group'
Why do clever people join the Lords? Do they truly enjoy it? Is 'public service' a believable motive or is there a deeper need for some terrible 'relevance'?
Michael Howard, 84, ex-Tory leader, was in attendance. Ditto: Ken Clarke, 85, slumped in a wheelchair; former Archbishop John Sentamu, 76; my old editor Charles Moore, 68; ex-MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller, 77; David Pannick, KC, 69. Could those last four not use their time elsewhere to society's better advantage? In the time I watched Lord Pannick he could have earned a pile of ducats at the bar. Those daily allowances may attract the more moth-eaten peers but that can't be true of all of them.
The Duke of Wellington languished on the Crossbenches, an urbane salamander. No stately home to run? The Bishop of Winchester was biting a fingernail. Not a gesture you want from a prelate. I think I saw William Waldegrave, civilised ex provost of Eton. All that intelligence and charm was imprisoned by the drone of onetime Labour MP Phil Wilson, now a Government minister. Why do the likes of corporate-strategy yogi John Birt, supermarkets tyro Lucy Neville-Rolfe, TV's Robert Winston and his moustaches torture themselves thus? Is a title that important to them?
A minister called Katz discussed vegan recipes and said we should all eat more beans. He was weirdly fascinating. No sideburns. His hair just sits on his head like an angled plate.
Soon we heard from Liz Lloyd. She was deputy chief of staff to Tony Blair and is now a science minister. She seemed terrified, under-briefed, reluctant to look up from her notes. Lord Pannick clutched his brains-stuffed skull. His eyes flew to the ceiling in desperation. Yet still he sat there. Dan Hannan, the brilliant right-wing mystic, ambled in with hands behind back, the gait of a Cranmerite martyr strolling the cloisters. A Lib Dem mouse started squeaking about methane. Then a minister called Katz discussed vegan recipes and said we should all eat more beans. Not more hot air, please! This Katz was weirdly fascinating. No sideburns. His hair just sits on his head like an angled plate.
And then Lady Sherlock, a gesticulating gasbag from the pensions department, said the point of work was that it provided 'self-respect, teamwork,a peer group'. What a peer group here: electoral rejects,charity-sector busybodies,civil service duds and physical wrecks from forgotten decades.To sit alongside such appointees of Corbyn,Truss,Johnson,etc:where's the self-respect in that?
I headed back to the Commons and for once felt liberated by its legitimacy. Yvette Cooper had earlier taken questions. She is still getting the hang of the Foreign Office. Last week she accompanied the King to the Vatican and was asked to read a lesson in the Sistine Chapel. Encountering the New Testament verb 'travaileth', head-wobbler Yvette came over all Dame Edna Everage and pronounced the 'vail' as 'vile'. Queen Camilla, old pro, kept an admirably straight face,burying her nose in an order of service that was roughly the size of a Berni Inn wine list.