1/9 My response to the announcement today that @10DowningStreet has appointed 16 new peers to the @UKHouseofLords:

My
fundamental concern is about the number of new peers that have been appointed by the Prime Minister in his first 12 months in Office.

2/9 Mr Johnson has added 16 to his list of appointments bringing the total for the year up to 52 new peers over two lists. This list will bring the total in the House of Lords to over 830 - almost 200 more than the House of Commons.
3/9 I will not comment on the personalities involved, although perhaps I could personally welcome @JohnSentamu. But my concern remains that the central defect is the present system of appointments.
4/9 Unlike other senates in democratic countries, there is no limit on the number of members there can be. Any Prime Minister can appoint as many as he or she likes. To her great credit the previous Prime Minister, @theresa_may , committed her govt to a policy of ‘moderation.'
5/9 In a massive U-turn, those words seem to have been forgotten. It may also now be the time to review the role and the powers of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC.)
6/9 The number of appointments now being made also run smack against the recommendations of the Burns committee on the size of the House that was overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Lords. The committee recommended that numbers should be reduced to 600.
7/9 To add insult to injury, for the second time the announcement of new peers has been made when Parliament is not sitting.
8/9 Sometimes the Lords itself is blamed for a failure to change. My answer to that is- don't blame the Lords, blame successive governments who have avoided the subject.
9/9 The reply has been that change is ‘not a priority’. It is possible that with the last two lists, the public may now disagree.

More from Government

If you're curious what Trump's defense will look like, all you have to do is turn on Fox News. My latest at @mmfa

The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.

And in fact, this predates Trump.

In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop


That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the

In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.

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