Spiritual Direction

This is an intriguing Division List. And there we have it. At five past six yesterday evening, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to keep the bishops in the House of Lords, with no one who had been elected as a Labour MP voting in favour of removal, and with 342 people in receipt of the Labour Whip voting for the status quo, along with seven who had either been suspended from that Whip or resigned it. But David Davis and Jim Allister were on the other side.

The seven o'clock vote on Third Reading, to remove the hereditary peers, was no less startling, with only Conservatives voting against, although only three fifths even of those, while Allister, Alex Easton and Robin Swann voted in favour as the DUP and Reform UK abstained. Having voted on amendments minutes earlier, they were not absent.

Making us all proud to be British, the Daily Mail is blaming Meghan Markle for Justin Welby. But assuming that he was not given a life peerage, then either his successor must be an opponent of assisted suicide, or Lord Carey, of the Peter Ball scandal, must resign. The House of Commons has just voted explicitly and overwhelmingly to keep Lords Spiritual. The manner of filling those apparently permanent seats in Parliament now needs to be revisited. The arrangements that have obtained since Gordon Brown was Prime Minister will not do.