Taking Back Control

Not for the first time, the greatest democracy in the world (the United Kingdom, for those who came in late) must rely upon the unelected chamber of its Mother of Parliaments to prevent an excess of democratic zeal in interpreting the will of the people. The jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, on whose already erratic intellect the oeuvre of David Irving has exerted much the same stabilising influence as Gothic romances did upon Miss Catherine Morland, is plotting to castrate the Electoral Commission and give ministers yet more power to mark their own homework. A cross-party cabal of peers, including the sometime authoritarian Baron Blunkett of Brightside and Hillsborough, is supporting an amendment to preserve the Commission's independence; which may leave the National Johnson to decide whether an unseemly bout of intra-parliamentary ping-pong could mark a suitably sordid climax to his extensive career of constitutional vandalism.