Nigel Farage is raging over Sir Keir Starmer’s attempt to stuff the House of Lords with allies. Reform UK was not allowed to nominate anyone for the upper chamber, despite Labour putting 25 names forward.
Mr Farage said: “In the summer I wrote to Keir Starmer to ask that Reform have some representation in the House of Lords. He didn’t give me the courtesy of a response, despite Reform winning the elections in May. This makes me more determined to smash the political establishment than ever.”
The chairman of the supermarket chain Iceland, Richard Walker, and Matthew Doyle, a former Number 10 director of communications, have been nominated for a peerage by the Prime Minister. Katie Martin, a former senior adviser to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, is also among the 25 nominations from Sir Keir Starmer, according to a list published by No 10 on Wednesday.
The series of Labour appointments to Parliament’s upper chamber comes as the Government has faced staunch opposition from peers over its flagship workers’ rights legislation. Meanwhile, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has nominated former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who in recent years has become a women’s rights activists in the debate over trans rights. Sir John Redwood, the ex-Conservative Cabinet minister, and journalist and historian Simon Heffer, have also been nominated by Mrs Badenoch.
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ECHR reform is on the table because politicians are scared of being booted out, Farage declares
Nigel Farage told GB News European leaders are now “apologisng” for “wrecking your cities” by encouraging record levels of immigration.
He said: “Not just in Britain, but across the rest of Europe, governments are in total panic. They have pursued open door immigration policies, some of them, like Sweden, to an absolutely lunatic degree.
“And of course, much of was this encouraged, if you remember, by the German Chancellor of the time, Angela Merkel.
“What the European leaders are now saying is, Sorry for wrecking your cities and ruining your lives. We’re now going to do something about it. And it seems the British Labour government is on the same track.
“David Lammy did go to Strasbourg today to talk about the European Convention on Human Rights and its interpretation by the court in that city. At the heart of this is Article Three of the Convention, which is about sending people back to countries where they could be tortured.
“Perhaps more controversially is Article Eight, the right to a family life. And we know British judges have said, well, you know, the guy’s got a cat, he has to stay.
“In terms of how much that can shift and change, from what I can make of it 27 countries were in favour of a change of interpretation, but 18 countries weren’t.
“This has got nowhere today. Basically, governments across Europe are terrified of new centre-right parties. That’s what this is all about.
“Isn’t this a bit like the debate around the EU: every single government from 1974, in every single election promised they’d reform the Common Agricultural Policy. They never, ever did.
“The logic with this would be if it’s unreformable, we have to decide to stay or leave.”
Lords row set to intensify over coming years
A Labour source suggested further appointments by the party to the Lords could follow throughout the current Parliament.
They said: “The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance that has allowed them to frustrate our plans to make working families better off.
“This needs to be corrected to deliver on our mandate from the British people.
“We will continue to progress our programme of reform, which includes removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.”
