Inside The Lords: from brittle Labour to surging Reform
Micro-managing regulations, banter bans and bureaucratic virtue signalling - Claire reports from inside parliament.
A weekend is a long time in politics. When I filmed Inside the Lords on Friday, one issue I reflected on was the fallout of Zia Yusuf’s shock resignation. Now, within days, he’s back. But my main theme remains true: the political class is unravelling, reflected by an establishment - many who sit on the Red Benches in the Lords - in denial about why Reform is cutting through.
At the end of last week, Labour pulled off a surprise win in the Scottish by-election. The commentariat cheered, the SNP mourned, but Labour's ‘victory lap’ was more likely to fuel the very revolt it pretends doesn't exist - most of them entirely missed the real story. Reform UK came within touching distance of the top spot. In Scotland - the land where Farage is supposed to be kryptonite. That’s not a footnote, it’s the headline.
We need to push through the smoke and mirrors and see a Party gaining ground despite relentless media hostility and internal disruption. Why? Because ordinary people - many lifelong Labour voters - have had enough. They feel despised, sneered at and written off by the very Parties that claim to speak for them.
Labour’s response to this populist surge? They’re reacting with all the political nous of a rabbit in the headlights. Starmer held a special press conference just to attack Reform - in a glass factory, of all places, surrounded by visibly mortified workers. It backfired, as even the mainstream media asked critical questions. Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves pops up in a bus depot promising the moon (or better transport links), eyes darting nervously while workers behind her look like they’re being held hostage. Some of those eye rolls will be forever memes. Apparently a tram here, and a train on time there, will be enough to win back disillusioned voters.
The belated slow U-turn on Labour’s disastrous cancellation of the winter-fuel allowance, and the fanfare about more free school dinners reveals that Labour think people can be bought off with hand-outs. It’s very much a ‘let them eat cake’ mentality. Meanwhile, real concerns about wasteful, politicised public spending (that Zia Yusuf aims to expose) or the erosion of free speech, everyday liberties and two-tier justice, are brushed off as ‘Trumpism’ or ‘culture-war nonsense’. I witnessed this when I was on the panel of Politics Live last week, discussing blasphemy law by the backdoor. People have had enough of such lazy slurs. And, judging by my inbox of wholly positive emails after my BBC appearance on the Quran-burning case, so have many voters. Take a look here:
Another example of the mismatch between rhetoric and reality is the Employment Rights Bill, slowly trundling through the House of Lords. Angela Rayner et al boast that this is all about improving workers’ rights. It will get the voters back, they conclude. But while perhaps 25 per cent of this huge Bill focuses on protecting employee rights and is worth supporting, it largely comprises a bloated wish list from trade-union bureaucrats – not rank-and-file workers. It is packed full of micro-managing regulations that are likely to lead to the unintended consequences of job losses, unemployment, low growth and SMEs going under, unable to survive the costly and largely pointless regulatory demands of crossing the t-s and dotting the i-s forced on them by the state. This includes the now-infamous Banter Ban Clause 20, which will effectively force all employers to have legislative responsibility for any third parties using alleged harassing words or conversations that their staff encounter and may complain about. Litigation hell beckons. I explained my concerns in one of my contributions. It’s worth noting that the response was to write off concerns as a confected outrage. Nothing to see here gaslighting as usual.
If the government really care about discrimination against workers, you’d assume it would enthusiastically embrace an amendment arguing against people being sacked or disciplined for their political views or party affiliation. Historically the labour movement rightly fought against blacklists and such demonisation. But when I supported Lord Toby Young’s amendment on the topic, using the example of Academy of Ideas volunteer Saba Poursaeedi, who lost his job with a ‘progressive’ Housing Association because he was intending to stand for Reform UK in the election, Labour’s front bench tut tutted and refused to engage. Meanwhile, the serried rank of now ennobled TU leaders denied that any political bias exists in any workplace (if aimed at anyone who they assume to be a wrong‘un).
The message is clear - this is workers’ rights according to a prescriptive script, written by policy wonks. Here is my attempt at probing whether it’s anything beyond bureaucratic virtue signalling to force workplaces to produce Equality Action Plans on the alleged gender pay-gap, and to make special arrangements for menopausal women at work.
Regardless of what you think of my views on women’s equal rights at work, it was a modest, good faith intervention, so I was taken aback by an extraordinarily vicious verbal attack from one Labour peer, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who to mass ‘hear hears’ from the government benches, proclaimed: ‘I am utterly appalled by the proposition and speech from the noble Baroness Lady Fox, who lest there were any doubt, has given the clearest possible indication of her political journey from the extreme Left to the extreme Right…it is an absolute disgrace …[and]…will be cheered from the rafters by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump…a very dangerous line for members of this House to push”. Bloody hell, it had it all - too dangerous to say out loud, must be far right if it upsets the orthodoxy, appalling, disgraceful. As Lord Stewart Jackson noted, all a bit rich from a Party who until the Supreme Court ruling, didn’t even know what woman was and which has betrayed gender-critical women at work and in its own Party for years. I was fuming as you can see from my summation speech:
The truth is, me getting my head bitten off for daring to challenge the received opinion - on the menopause of all things - is only a taster of what millions face daily for asking awkward questions or disagreeing with Labour’s brittle narrative. We now know that the government’s Prevent strategy thinks anyone who questions mass immigration and lack of cultural integration should be considered as a positional terrorist threat. This is what we’re up against: a political elite terrified of dissent, addicted to performance and hostile to perfectly reasonable common-sense views. Hopefully, these Inside the Lords videos shine a light on such shenanigans as they play out inside parliament’s gilded bubble. And for some real debates on the issues that matter, sign up to our Battle of Ideas YouTube channel here:
MEDIA AND INTERVIEWS:
CATCH UP: Is Wokeness Really Over? The Andrew Doyle interview with Claire Fox on the Podcast of Ideas:
CATCH UP: Claire Fox interview with Philip Davies on Amazing Academics:
DON’T MISS: Claire Fox will be a panellist on Any Questions, BBC Radio4 on Friday 13 June at 8pm
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Classical Philosophy Reading Group
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Thank you Claire 👍
Very well said. At least one member of the Lords has some guts and common sense. How on earth did we get to this situation in a supposedly 'free' country?