Parliament

What should worry David Cameron about tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee on Lords reform was that it was not just the usual suspects who spoke out against it. The two MPs presenting the case against were members who have never defied the whip: Jesse Norman and Nadhim Zahawi. Those present were particularly struck by some polling data that Zahawi, who used to run YouGov, presented. It showed that when asked what issues were a priority for them zero per cent of the electorate mentioned reform of the Lords. Even when prompted, this number only rose to six per cent. But Zahawi’s polling shows that if reform does go ahead, almost two thirds of the public want a referendum on it.

Both the Tory and Lib Dem manifestoes promised to reform the House of Lords, as did the Coalition Agreement, but the gulf in enthusiasm between the two parties is enormous. For many Lib Dems, this is of course — as Nick Clegg put it in December — ‘one boat that urgently needs rocking’. For many Tories, it is something to be ambivalent about, or to oppose. Which is why the politics around the ongoing Lords Reform Bill are likely to be so fraught. James has already written of how there are ‘more than 81 [Conservative] MPs prepared to vote against it.

From the Sun: ‘A LABOUR MP was arrested late last night for assault after allegedly headbutting a Tory rival in a House of Commons bar. Witnesses allege Eric Joyce, 51, launched an unprovoked attack on Stuart Andrew, 40. It is claimed Joyce, MP for Falkirk, had to be held back by several Labour colleagues. A source said: “Stuart was given a Glasgow kiss.”’ Read the full report here. UPDATE: Joyce has been suspended by the Labour Party. The Standard's Joe Murphy has a particularly detailed account of it all here.

When David Cameron wielded his veto at the European Council in December many Tories thought this was the beginning of a process of repatriation of powers from the EU. Myself, I thought it would be the high water mark of the government’s Euro-scepticism — and so it has proven. But things are about to get even worse for the Bill Cashes of this Parliament. In the short-term, at least.   Why so? Well, the government appears to be concluding that it will not get a receptive ear from its European partners on any repatriation bid. The other European leaders are simply too busy fixing the euro to even read any UK proposals. And what's clear already is that they will remain too busy not just for another few months, but for another year or more.

The issue of Stephen Hester’s bonus is going to carry on hurting the government. Labour has now announced that it will use an opposition day debate on 7 February to hold a parliamentary vote on the issue. The coalition will either have to lose, an admittedly non-binding vote, or whip its MPs to go through the lobbies in defence of Hester’s bonus. As Labour showed when it used the threat of a Commons vote to push Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to abandon its bid for full control of BSkyB, the bully pulpit of Parliament can be extremely effective. These votes also bring out tensions within the two coalition parties. I imagine that Lib Dem MPs will be even less keen than Tory ones to support the Hester bonus.