No Democratic Mandate

Peter Hitchens is on fine form, not only with this:

Miss Bagshawe is not, as I had mistakenly thought, a vague and innocent dingbat wandering in and out of political parties in a fog of confusion, but a highly articulate and coherent social liberal. The fact that she once joined New Labour, and is now a Cameroon Conservative, shows that she understands very well which party serves the socially liberal interest at any given time.

But also with this:

Cameroon businessman Simon Wolfson's ludicrous claim (for those who know any history) that the 1979 Tory manifesto contained no mention of trade union legislation. I turned to Simon Heffer and said 'I am sure that can't be so', and Simon had, within a minute, summoned up on his hand-held device the long section of that manifesto dealing with the matter. The Cameroons repeatedly make similar false claims about 1979, so as to spread the idiotic hope among loyalists that a Cameron government will be more conservative than it appears. They were badly caught out on this occasion. It is, in any case, constitutionally impossible for such a thing to happen. As Tim Montgomerie has pointed out, if the Tories win they will be the first Conservative Government not to have a guaranteed majority in the Lords. Anything which is not in their manifesto could be (and would be) voted down legitimately by the Lords under accepted constitutional conventions which mean they're not bound to support Bills for which the government has no democratic mandate.