Seconds Out

Anyone remotely impressed by Theresa May's speech has not been reading Arron Banks's Twitter, @Arron_banks.

Everyone should. I am very much starting to like Arron Banks.

Both Houses of Parliament will reject withdrawal from the Single Market, if it ever gets that far.

But whereas the composition of the House of Commons can be changed, that of the House of Lords cannot.

At least, not without what would be the ludicrous creation of hundreds of Peers in one go.

Of course, that is the point. Giving the Lords a veto is May's utterly Tory way of ensuring that the whole scheme is killed off in the end.

This has nothing to do with such reforms as there were under Tony Blair.

Those reforms postdated the European Communities Act, the Single European Act, and the Maastricht Treaty.

This looks like it, the real possibility of a new second chamber.

But there is no point waiting for May to come up with anything specific.

Likewise, opposition to an elected second chamber was a key Blairite identifier, like support for First Past the Post, and opposition to the lowering of the voting age.

Instead, the Left needs to get in there with a specific proposal that would maximise the representation of the Labour Left, of smaller Left formations that had the good sense not to use the C-word or what have you for electoral purposes, and of non-party Left activists.

There are alliances to be made here from the Lib Dems, to the Greens, to UKIP, to the Conservative Right, to Plaid Cymru, to the UUP or the DUP (whichever was doing less well at the time), to the SDLP, to the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.

Watch this space.