Not The Red Benches

So the House of Lords can block workers' rights that were in the winning party's manifesto at last year's General Election, but it cannot, it absolutely must not, block a Private Member's Bill for the assisted suicide that was in no one's manifesto. The Government has allocated extra time for the Lords to pass assisted suicide. It refused to allocate extra time in the Commons for scrutiny of that Bill, which would now be heading for defeat without this deathbed intervention.

Conservative Governments do not "consult" the unions. This only ever works in one direction. On behalf of the only people who interested it, the Government has told Labour MPs that it had given them the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, so this was the price of that. Shameful. Utterly, utterly, utterly shameful. And while Angela Rayner brought her downfall on herself, hasn't it turned out all right for some?

In opposing even today's monstrosity, the Conservatives are to the right of the CBI, just as their continued support for the cap puts them to the right of Reform UK and of all four stripes of Unionist MP from Northern Ireland, and indeed their frontbench to the right of Suella Braverman. For the second week running, Reform is not on the Question Time panel but one of the 72 Liberal Democrat MPs is, so someone has obviously had a word. The nearest thing to a Reformer this week is Luke Johnson. Among other things, he used to be Chairman of Channel 4. Tell me again how the media, even the part that was an old-fashioned nationalised company having been set up that way by Margaret Thatcher, was biased to the Left.