EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: King may block Starmer's plan for Labour majority

2023-06-28

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Sir Keir Starmer’s bid to create enough peerages to ensure a Labour majority in the House of Lords could hit the royal buffers

Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to create sufficient peerages to ensure a Labour Lords majority could hit the royal buffers. King Charles might emulate one of his predecessors, Edward VII, who blocked his prime minister Herbert Asquith’s bid to swamp the red benches with his supporters to remove the Lords veto on his legislation. Fortuitously for Asquith, Edward died, allowing the PM to take advantage of a novice monarch in George V, getting him to create all the peerages he wanted in advance of the second 1910 general election. Starmer will have to hope Charles is equally amenable.

Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to create sufficient peerages to ensure a Labour Lords majority could hit the royal buffers

King Charles might emulate one of his predecessors, Edward VII, who blocked his prime minister Herbert Asquith’s bid to swamp the red benches with his supporters to remove the Lords veto on his legislation

Turning up at yesterday’s Television and Radio Industries Club (Tric) awards, Nigel Farage – about to quench his camel’s thirst – tweeted: ‘Not off to a good start here at the Tric Awards, as the main sponsor made me leave the drinks reception area.’

Farage added later: ‘Well knock me down… the main sponsor here has apologised to me, which I have fully accepted.’ Did they mistake him for Eamonn Holmes?

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw’s husband Neal Dalgleish is in the same boat as Elton John’s partner David Furnish – ignored by the honours committee. Ben, standing down as the MP for Exeter at the next election, says of his knighthood: ‘I’ve been feeling rather conflicted about it. If you’re a knight your wife gets to be a lady. If you’re a gay knight, your husband gets nothing.’ Surely Neal, a BBC producer, will always be Ben’s knight in shimmering armour!

The BBC’s foreign correspondent Fergal Keane medically signed off from covering the Ukraine conflict or other ‘hot wars’, blames the origins of his anxieties on reporting from the Rwandan genocide in 1994. ‘I do wish I’d never gone,’ he tells Radio Times. ‘If I sense that things are out of kilter, I can very rapidly start to spiral. I get anxious and terrified and my head is like a washing machine. I just can’t live like that again. It’s hell.’ Deep waters.

The BBC’s foreign correspondent Fergal Keane (pictured) medically signed off from covering the Ukraine conflict or other ‘hot wars’, blames the origins of his anxieties on reporting from the Rwandan genocide in 1994

Annoyingly that he’s ‘absolutely blown away’ to have the mechanical bull mascot at Birmingham’s 2022 Commonwealth Games named Ozzy after a public vote, rocker Ozzy Osbourne adds: ‘I’m Birmingham forever.’ Has Ozzy changed his tune? Wife Sharon wants them to relocate back to their native Blighty from California with Ozzy recently protesting: ‘I’ll go f****** insane in England. I’m more of an American now. I love this country.’

French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who died in last week’s Titan submersible tragedy, once mocked Robert Ballard, who first discovered the Titanic in 1985, and announced plans to paint the hull of the submerged wreck. ‘Your proposed project’, wrote Nargeolet, ‘reminds me of the man in the 1950s who wanted to straighten up the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy with his car and a cable.’

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