Whilst the clergy can’t wash their hands of their role in appearing to facilitate “industrial scale” conversion to game the system, it is the Government that sets the rules of the game.
It insists that there was no plan to move to by-election rules. “We’re not so stupid as to push a scheme that we know would be opposed by a large number of MPs.”
The few solutions that have been offered up have tended to be blunt instruments, more likely to inflame tensions than deliver results in such a hostile institutional environment.
The A list and its successors haven’t kept a golden generation out of Parliament. Many of those who might have made it up aren’t putting themselves forward for selection in the first place.
Peerages for Ben Houchen, Kulveer Ranger and Shaun Bailey. Knighthoods for Jacob Rees-Mogg and Simon Clarke. Priti Patel becomes a Dame.
If politicians come to believe that the civil service is preoccupied with speaking truth to power at the expense of doing its job, Francis Maude-type solutions will be imposed, regardless of which party is in power.
In Greater London, Greater Manchester, and the West Midlands, we see the politicking, wokery, and limpness of Labour that would continue nationally were it given the keys to Number 10.
There is no time for writing yet more reports about Child Sexual Exploitation: the Government wishes to show it is now going to act.
This vote must be chalked up as a convincing win for Sunak – and a sign that Johnson and Truss have less support among their colleagues than one might have thought.
For whatever reason, he may be morphing into the politician I hoped he would become – the moderate man whose patience is exhausted.
The broad consensus needed for constitutional change is at odds with the factional spirit in which they have launched their campaign.
Conservatives should be careful not to assume that all Hindus are Thatcherites in waiting. Some regard standing up to Modi, and keeping his anti-Muslim politics out of Britain, as much more important.
The exceptional demands placed on our system by the Brexit process should not be treated as a precedent for legislation that deliberately pushes constitutional boundaries.