This is indeed a desperate time.  There have been Russians protesting against the invasion of Ukraine so at least not everyone there is of the same mind as Putin.  I used to know a lady of Polish descent whose father never went back to Lvov (now Lviv) because it was in part of Poland that was taken by the former USSR after World War II.

Does anyone know what issues were concerning the parts of Ukraine that were possibly wanting independence?*  An invasion by Russia seems (to me) like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

* I know I can search on the internet but nowadays I wonder what I can trust on the world wide web.

Temperance wrote:

"I told him her that hat would come back to haunt him her."

The UK foreign secretary caused a stir yesterday by saying that she would 'support' any UK civilians who wanted to go to the Ukraine to fight. She added "we're fighting for freedom and democracy". This morning the defence secretary qualified this by saying that this should be ex-service personnel in agreement with the Ukrainean authorities. The last time I checked, however, Great Britain & Northern Ireland wasn't at war with either the Russian Federation or the Ukraine. Even under the terms of all-aid-short-of-war (as expressed by President Roosevelt towards Britain during the early 1940s) it was still technically illegal for any US citizen to enlist in the armed forces of Britain or Canada etc. I know that during the Winter War of 1939-40, following Stalin's attack upon Finland, there were many international volunteers who went to assist the Finns against the overwhelming weight of the Soviet Union. Among them was a young Christopher Lee. I'm not sure, however, exactly what his status was in the eyes of British law at the time. And just prior to that, of course, there were the famous international brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Indeed it was the image of the volunteers in Spain during the 1930s which was evoked by someone on the radio this afternoon during a discussion on the comments which the foreign secretary and the defence secretary had made. Someone else, however, pointed out that in our time volunteers in such wars have tended to be the likes of international recruits of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s including one Osama bin Laden or else England's very own jihadis who won the hearts of the world with their gallant exploits in Iraq and Syria in 2014-15. Someone else went further and described the foreign secretary's comments as 'witless'.

The Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870 is still in force and is meant to curb British citizens taking part in foreign wars. As far as I can see the only successful prosecution was for the Jameson Raid of 1895.

found this on Wayback machine.

The Foreign Enlistment Act and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

S. P. MACKENZIE
University of South Carolina
This article examines the official response to the policy problems raised by the over two thousand Britons who went to fight for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, with particular reference to the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870). Revived in January 1937 as a means of reducing the flow of volunteers and curbing the recruiting efforts of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the act proved embarrassingly unenforceable. Ambiguity over its applicability to the situation in Spain, combined with problems of evidence, meant that no charges were ever laid against volunteers caught attempting to leave for Spain or members of the recruiting organization of the CPGB. Though a complete failure as a legal tool, the Foreign Enlistment Act nevertheless symbolically underlined the British government's declared support for international non-intervention in Spain, and was never rescinded.

I'm not sure if such things should be mentioned here, but as we live through the current surreal times I feel I should bring this up.

According to The Times, Russian State TV has given a warning of what could be the fate of those of us living here in these vulnerable islands (including the Republic of Ireland which really does seem a bit unfair):


Russian state television has issued a chilling warning that Moscow could wipe out Britain with a nuclear tsunami in retaliation for supporting Ukraine.

In his Sunday evening primetime show, the Channel One anchor Dmitry Kiselyov said a strike by Russia’s Poseidon nuclear underwater drone could turn Britain into a wasteland by drowning the country in a 500-metre tidal wave of radioactive seawater.


This has, predictably, provoked disbelief and outrage. One UK resident, identified as "Rather Annoyed Newcastle-under-Lyme" issued a chilling warning of his or her own. It read:

Having been worried by all this talk of climate change, I recently bought several expensive drought-resistant plants for my garden and put them in over the Bank Holiday weekend. I am now told I should have bought flora which will flourish in a watery environment. If the Russians invade here, Mr Putin should understand he will get a piece of my mind and a bill for £82.45p.

Seems to be quite a weapon:

Poseidon Super Torpedo

As you said Ireland would be affected too, plus everything on the other side of the North Sea and English Channel. More blood-curdling talk from Russia who seem to forget that we too have the weapons to wipe them out in minutes. 
Having said that I think there is a danger that Putin will get desperate and think if I can't have a Greater Russia then the rest of the world can go to hell and he'll push the button.

Let's hope the Russian people come to their senses and realise Putin is not Ivan the Terrible reborn, a new strongman Tsar of All the Russias, but that he is just a very naughty boy.

I hope also that someone tells Lloyd Austin, the US Defence Secretary, to shut up and stop blabbing that the aim of the West is to "weaken Russia". Talk about bear-prodding. I bet the Russian State media loved reporting that.

Thank you for posting the details about that Very Big Torpedo, Trike. I now feel much better understanding what we might have coming our way. I do hope the flood barrier in the field by my cottage holds. The Environment Agency said nothing bar an "environmental catastrophe" would cause flooding here. Is suppose Mr Putin is a bit of a one-man environmental catastrophe: someone really should give him a stern look.

Time for a quick chorus of "Look On The Bright Side of Life", I suppose.

Certainly can, Tempski:



I've seen differing info about Poseidon. warhead estimate vary from 2MT to 100 MT (?!). 

I think the 1600 ft tidal wave is somewhat of an exaggeration, the weapons' intended target is more likely to be US Navy Carrier Battlegroups of Shore Bases & Installations.

Temperance wrote:

Ivan the Terrible reborn, a new strongman Tsar of All the Russias

If he did seek to emulate Ivan the Terrible then it might not be such a bad thing. For instance, during Ivan’s reign, Muscovy had neither a Baltic coastline nor a Black Sea coastline and, looking at subsequent history, it probably should have stayed that way.

A contemporary of Elizabeth I, Ivan the Terrible is often likened to her father Henry VIII. Both were married 6 times yet their marriages to their first wives lasted for as long or even longer than the time married to the other five wives put together. When Henry succeeded his father, one of his titles was Lord of Ireland which he then promoted to King of Ireland. When Ivan succeeded his father, his title was Grand Duke of Muscovy which he then promoted to ‘Tsar and Grand Prince of All Rus’. Both Ivan and Henry also appropriated large amounts of property from the church.

Ivan the Terrible maintained a long and lively diplomatic correspondence with the Tudor court. This stemmed from an incident during the reign of Mary I whereby a ship of some English fur traders in the Arctic had got blown off course in the White Sea and went ashore near Archangel for repair and supply. It wasn't to be a brief visit however. They were informed that they had been summoned for an audience with Ivan himself and were escorted 800 miles overland to Moscow for the meeting. As fearful as such a long journey and prospective rendezvous was, it turned out that Ivan was quite taken with these exotic occidentals even going so far as granting preferential trading rights to the English ahead of other Western rivals such as the French and the Dutch. This unofficial embassy soon became semi-official when Mary Tudor granted a charter to the traders as the Muscovy Company upon their return.

After Mary's death three years later the new queen Elizabeth took up the Russian correspondence. Official embassies were exchanged through which Elizabeth even agreed to grant refuge to Ivan in England if things went sour with the boyar ruling class and he were forced to flee Russia. Skilled artisans from England were also sent to Russia to assist Ivan with various building projects etc. This incensed the Poles and the Scandinavians because the English were effectively sanction-busting their attempts at containing the emerging menace to the East. Over the decades the correspondence see-sawed between London and Moscow occasionally interrupted if ever Ivan felt slighted by Elizabeth or by her ambassadors or simply got bored. In 1576, however, Elizabeth’s new ambassador Daniel Sylvester was killed by a lightning strike and his letter of accreditation burned just as he was about to be presented to Ivan at court. This was taken as being a very bad portent indeed and Ivan began rethinking his relationship with England and started to make overtures towards Vienna and Venice as alternative sources of Western intercourse. This didn’t amount to much, however, as the Catholic powers were even more suspicious of the Orthodox despot than they were of the Ottoman variant. Also, with the long cold Russian winters, it was English wool and cloth which both Ivan and the Russian public prized and sought and had become accustomed to.

In the 1580s a war with Poland and Sweden was going particularly badly for Ivan and so he attempted to rekindle his relationship with Elizabeth. Years earlier when Elizabeth had succeeded Mary, Ivan hadn’t entertained any thought of marriage with the young queen because he was already married himself. Now, however, Ivan was on his sixth wife and Elizabeth herself was approaching 50 and a committed ‘virgin queen’ as her letters to him testified. Ivan, however, considered a match for himself from among Elizabeth’s kinswomen. The Russian ambassador in London suggested Lady Mary Hastings, the daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon as a prospective candidate. Being the great-granddaughter of George, Duke of Clarence she was of suitable royal pedigree via her Plantagenet-Yorkist ancestry and preparations were duly made. Lady Mary, however, was no blushing teenager. She was in her early 30s and had no intention of marrying Ivan the Terrible or anyone else for that matter. She flatly refused the offer and like her cousin Elizabeth would remain unmarried for the rest of her days. Mary would, however, have to bear the occasional taunt of being nicknamed ‘the empress of Muscovia’ by those around her.

The whole episode was even more embarrassing for Ivan himself. When news got out that he had attempted a foreign marriage with someone who wasn’t even of Orthodox faith and, moreover, had then denied him, it was taken as being an insult to Russia. The boyars in particular were offended that he hadn’t chosen from among their daughters or sisters for a bride rather than this foreign and seemingly ungrateful English girl. Needless to say Ivan’s paranoia and fear of the boyars reached fever pitch in the final years of his reign as the boyars plotted against him and his heir.  



(Ivan the Terrible – when not massacring the priests and citizenry of the ancient city of Novgorod, or even bludgeoning his own son to death – he once fancied himself a suitable bridegroom for a well-born English lady)

In May 2015 Temperance wrote:

Gosh, that poor baby looks terrified.

That baby would now be about 8 years old. The morning after the 2014 independence referendum in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon said that there probably wouldn't be another until about 2029 - i.e. 15 years later. It was supposed to be a 'once in a generation event'. Even allowing for the fact that the Scottish Parliament reduced the voting age from 18 to 16 in the run-up to the last referendum, 2029 would still be a year early for the minimum time-span for a political generation as defined by Holyrood. The child in the photo would still be too young to participate even then - let alone in 2023. I suppose it all depends on what one considers a political generation to be.

I suppose it all depends on what one considers a political generation to be.
Speaking as a politician, it means, of course, precisely what I want it to mean.

Here's a copy of the Edinburgh Agreement. There is no mention of "once in a generation"

Edinburgh Agreement 2012

anyway the gap to a second referendum as defined by the Good Friday Agreement 1998 is seven years:

POLLS FOR THE PURPOSE OF SECTION 1 
1. The Secretary of State may by order direct the holding of a poll for the purposes of section 1 on a date specified in the order. 
2. Subject to paragraph 3, the Secretary of State shall exercise the power under paragraph 1 if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland. 
3. The Secretary of State shall not make an order under paragraph 1 earlier than seven years after the holding of a previous poll under this Schedule. 

So only another twelve months and then you can have another brexit/brentry vote, not that there's much appetite within the EU to accept Britain back, but you might be allowed to join the Single Market and Customs Union, which at a stroke would solve some of the most intractable brexity problems.

I would imagine so, a new poll on Brexit could be held next year. However, neither the Conservatives, Labour or the Lib-Dems are in favour of rejoining Europe, so there won't be.

The SNP are in favour of rejoining. A policy consistent with the 62% of the Scottish electorate who voted to stay in the EU.

If the SNP win an independence referendum at the second attempt will they allow a third if pro-unionists call for one? Of course not, the idea of neverendums until you get the result you want end once you've got the result you want.

Pro-unionist would have to win an election for that to happen.

Pro- Independence parties won 72 out of 129 seats at the 2021 Holyrood election. That's why this referendum is going ahead. It's called Democracy.

I suppose the 'once in a generation' concept stems from the timelines of the previous constitutional referenda in Scotland. The 1979 devolution referendum was followed by an 18-year gap until the 1997 devolution referendum which was followed by a 17-year gap until the 2014 independence referendum. Going on that trajectory then a 16-year gap to 2030 would seem to fit. 

The 7-year provision in the Good Friday Agreement is interesting. It's significant, however, that there hasn't been a Northern Ireland referendum in the 24 years since the Agreement itself was subjected to referendum in 1998. The only other time Northern Ireland has had a referendum in its 100 year history was the border poll of 1973. That, however, was boycotted by the main nationalist parties and so was basically an empty exercise. 

That's the problem when referendums and routine parliamentary/assembly elections are considered the same thing. A referendum is there to address a fundamental constitutional issue. It shouldn't be party political as such. It only carries credibility when all the main players, both for and against the motion, are agreed that the referendum should take place. Having a vote too soon after the previous one is likely to be seen as contentious by those who won the earlier contest.

Triceratops wrote:

Pro-unionist would have to win an election for that to happen.

Pro- Independence parties won 72 out of 129 seats at the 2021 Holyrood election. That's why this referendum is going ahead. It's called Democracy.

But it's not going ahead, I doubt it ever will. The SNP's calls for a referendum are bluff, they'll lose and they know it. It would almost be worth allowing one just to shut them up. 
I also find it difficult to associate the word Democracy with the SNP.

A referendum will go ahead next October. If for any reason it doesn't, then the next GE in Scotland will be a single issue vote on Independence.

You don't have a vote on this, so whatever your views are, they are immaterial.

If, as currently looks likely, there is no single party majority at the next GE, Indyref 2 is a nailed-on cert. It will be the price for C&S from SNP. Actually, Scottish independence suits the Tories (in electoral terms) better than it does Labour. How often would Labour have returned a majority without the Scottish seats?

If a hung parliament is what it will take to bring forward Indyref 2, then maybe it will do the same for AVref 2 as well. After all, it was the hung parliament of 2010 which resulted in the Alternative Vote Referendum the following year. Those of us who voted Yes in that particular referendum wuz well and truly clobbered. Now that's an issue which really was kicked into the long grass. We're looking at 2032 as the earliest possible date for a rematch (i.e. 21 years after 2011) but even that's doubtful. And it might not even be AVref 2 at all but maybe STVref 1 or something else again.

Triceratops wrote:

A referendum will go ahead next October. If for any reason it doesn't, then the next GE in Scotland will be a single issue vote on Independence.

You don't have a vote on this, so whatever your views are, they are immaterial.

It won't go ahead next October. Without the required legal say so Sturgeon knows any pretend referendum will be worthless and she's been to great lengths to tell us that it has to be a fully recognised legal vote.
The next General Election, as you say, will be the closest she'll get to a referendum. Campaigning on a single issue though could easily backfire with voters who'll want to hear more about wider policies not her endless diet of same old, same old. 
It does concern me as the vote will affect the future of the country I live in, the UK.

"Pretend referendum", did you get that from the Daily Mail?

If the referendum gets blocked then Scotland is not in a union but a prison. 

"same old, same old" for your information, Independence was why the SNP was formed in the first place.

The UK is finished. Three years time, Scotland will be independent and there will be a United Ireland.

Green George wrote:

If, as currently looks likely, there is no single party majority at the next GE, Indyref 2 is a nailed-on cert. It will be the price for C&S from SNP. Actually, Scottish independence suits the Tories (in electoral terms) better than it does Labour. How often would Labour have returned a majority without the Scottish seats?

George, in terms of seats that may well be the case. However if the GE is used as de facto referendum, then it will the number of votes cast, for or against Pro-Indy parties in the Election which will be the deciding factor. A simple majority of the count, ie 50% + 1 vote.

Vizzer wrote:

If a hung parliament is what it will take to bring forward Indyref 2, then maybe it will do the same for AVref 2 as well. After all, it was the hung parliament of 2010 which resulted in the Alternative Vote Referendum the following year. Those of us who voted Yes in that particular referendum wuz well and truly clobbered. Now that's an issue which really was kicked into the long grass. We're looking at 2032 as the earliest possible date for a rematch (i.e. 21 years after 2011) but even that's doubtful. And it might not even be AVref 2 at all but maybe STVref 1 or something else again.

The D'hondt System is used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to calculate allocate some parliamentary seats.

D'hondt system at Stormont

Triceratops wrote:

"Pretend referendum", did you get that from the Daily Mail?

If the referendum gets blocked then Scotland is not in a union but a prison. 

"same old, same old" for your information, Independence was why the SNP was formed in the first place.

The UK is finished. Three years time, Scotland will be independent and there will be a United Ireland.

The Daily Mail, certainly not, far too Right wing for my taste!
If not "pretend" then what word would you prefer to describe the fiasco of a unofficial, unsanctioned publicity stunt? "advisory", "consultative", "non-binding"? "Pretend" sums up perfectly the farce Sturgeon is proposing. 
Your vision of the future is unduly pessimistic. I don't see Scotland breaking away at all, for the simple fact that the Scots don't want too. 
As for Northern Ireland you're on slightly firmer ground. The rise of Catholic Nationalism plus a feeling among Brits that Northern Ireland is more trouble than it's worth could lead to a referendum on a united Ireland, but it's more likely 20 years hence not three.

Every referendum is consultative, that includes the 2016 Brexit referendum. 

And it's no publicity stunt, regardless of what you think.

The 2021 Scottish election was fought on the basis of a new referendum and was won by the SNP, so it has already been endorsed by the Scottish Electorate, and they're the ones who count.

I don't see anything pessimistic about breaking up the UK. If Scotland, and Wales and Northern Ireland want to leave that that is entirely up to them.
Things have materially changed since 2014, not least by Brexit, which Scotland, and NI, did not vote for. The only way to know for sure what Scots want is to hold a referendum, for someone in Stafford to come on here and say what Scots want is the height of arrogance.

As for NI, Johnson's gang of fascists are busy tearing up the NI Protocol, unilaterally breaking International Law, and rubbishing the Good Friday Agreement. And the United States is a guarantor of the GFA, so you can forget any trade deal with America.

Stafford or Stenhousemuir it's still my country some want to break up. 
As for a referendum opinion polls show most Scots don't even want one, which would indicate that a majority would vote no if it came to it. 
It's very tempting to call Sturgeon's bluff and let her have her precious vote just to see her and her Lefty mob lose and fade into oblivion. If a party with one policy to offer can't get that through after two attempts the game really is up.

There are 4 countries making up the UK, all with different histories, cultures and values. And, in Scotland's case a different legal system.

When the next referendum on Scottish Independence takes place (and it will) you don't get a vote, you have no say in the matter.

btw, two newspaper polls on Independence closed yesterday, both massively in favour, 69/31 for the Courier and 88/12 in the Herald, an out and out unionist paper

All we can do therefore is wait (and wait) until the next referendum takes place. I don't know how old you are, but I hope I've got another 25 years + so I could be dead before it takes place. And it won't be Sturgeon either leading the charge, she'll be long gone from the political scene by then.

An advertisement popped up when I opened this site today for a "no 10 stain remover".  I know it's just a number in a series of something like 'stain devils' but I couldn't help thinking of Bo-Jo.  https://clothes-doctor.com/products/stain-removal-tough-love

LadyinRetirement wrote:

An advertisement popped up when I opened this site today for a "no 10 stain remover". 

I'd hang onto that advert LiR as it looks like Britain's going to need it. The greased piglet's grudging "resignation" made it clear he personally doesn't believe he's in the slightest bit culpable, nor in his mind has he actually resigned and so he clearly has no intentions of going just yet. Meanwhile all his previously "loyal cabinet colleagues" and other supporters who were prepared to go onto national TV to voice "my complete and utter support of the PM" just hours before they then denounced him, are now fighting like rats in a sack for their chance to replace him as PM. Note that the decision on who replaces him will ultimately be made by just the 120,000 paid-up members of the Conservative Party  - no-one else in the country gets a say. To intentionally misquote President John F. Kennedy, their maxim seems to be: "I don't ask what I can offer my country, I just ask what it can do for me". Britain so desperately needs some Parliamentary reform.

Deleted.

Green George wrote:

I hear Bo?o's job application at Ikea has been turned down. They didn't like the way his cabinet fell apart.

Ha ha, GG.  This article on the BBC website is quite interesting - musing on what Bo-Jo will do next.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62547853.amp   If he did a PGCE qualification Bo-Jo could become a teacher or lecturer of Classics/Latin/Greek (but would that pay him what he's been accustomed to?).

Today (5 Sept 2022) the UK gets its fourth Prime Minister in five years - yet again a Tory although that was already a certainty because of how the system works. Although in the end the "winning" vote was just 57.4% of the 140,000 or so of those paid-up Tory party members (mostly white, retired, men, living in southern England) that were allowed a vote between just two final candidates. The choice of British PM was thus dictated by a very exclusive group who comprised at most 0.2% of the population, and even then 40% were unhappy with the majority decision. Given the percentages the result is hardly a resounding vote of confidence in the party's own choice, and it certainly doesn't give any mandate from the populace as a whole.

But it does rather beg the question: is the United Kngdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a democracy? Its Head of State (the Queen) is an hereditary poistion and its position also confers the role of head (God apart) of the Established State Religion. Meanwhile the upper parliamentary chamber of government - which is usually called the Senate in most other countries but is still called the House of Lords in Britain - is comprised, in the UK, of an unelected mix of hereditary lords (mostly related by family ties of marriage to the Head of State), major land-owners, rich businessmen, and Ecclesiastical leaders of this same Established Church (no other religious leaders being allowed), plus quite a lot of close friends, financial doners to political parties, and other (corrupt? surely not) business buddies of present and past Prime Ministers.

Seriously, how can the UK still claim to be a democracy?

I had typed something in response to your comment before, MM, when I mused about Bo-Jo's new job but I must have pressed a wrong button because it's gone without a trace and now I can't remember what I said exactly but will return when I get my thoughts in order.

I can't recall everything I said, MM, but I mused that we are probably better off in the UK than living under certain dictatorships.  There's certainly room for improvement. I miss Dennis Skinner's waggish heckling at the opening of Parliament.

I haven't seen anything on the news as yet as to how much of the eligible voters turned out.

Of course, Liz Truss isn't the first MP to change her political affiliation  but someone has dug out a video of a young Liz from 1994 when she was a Liberal Democrat talking against the monarchy.

Meles meles wrote:

The choice of British PM was thus dictated by a very exclusive group who comprised at most 0.2% of the population, and even then 40% were unhappy with the majority decision.

It certainly made one think of, say, an 18th century election whereby the overwhelming majority of people in any given constituency didn’t have the vote. In those days, at least, the eligible voters normally had a choice of Whig or Tory candidates. In this election, however, there were only Tory candidates. Yet the whole country and beyond were invited to take an interest in the proceedings including broadcast debates between the candidates etc. Plus ça change.

Meles meles wrote:

is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a democracy? Its Head of State (the Queen) is an hereditary position

Interestingly, what has seemingly changed over the last 25 years is the standing of the queen (as LiR's video testifies). In the immediate aftermath of the death of princess Diana in 1997, the queen was criticised by some in the London-based print and broadcast media for not returning from Balmoral to the UK capital ‘to be with her people’.  It didn’t seem to dawn of those self-appointed speakers on behalf of the London mob that she already was with her people - in Aberdeenshire. And that’s not to mention her need at that time to console her bereaved grandchildren, Diana’s sons. There was also a silly media-fabricated ‘outrage’ about a flag (or rather lack of one) atop Buckingham Palace.

25 years on and both Boris Johnson and Elizabeth Truss today travel from Westminster to Balmoral to meet the queen and resign/kiss hands respectively. This has never happened before in her reign and rarely did it happen with previous monarchs. Notably in 1908 king Edward VII was residing in Biarritz when prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned following a heart-attack. He was succeeded as leader of the Liberal party by Herbert Asquith the chancellor of the exchequer. Asquith then had to take the ferry across the British Channel and the train down thru France to the Basque County where he met the king to kiss hands at l’Hôtel du Palais. The event is commemorated in the hotel’s lobby by a plaque which reads:

Mr Henry Herbert Asquith
fut nommé Premier Ministre
de l’Empire Britannique
dans ce Palais le 7 Avril 1908
par sa Majesté Edouard VII.

Even in Edwardian times there were those in the UK press who criticised this as being somehow demeaning to the office of prime minister. I suspect, however, that the critics of the king 'enjoying the southern sun' were prompted by the unseasonably hard weather in the British Isles that month. They should have checked the weather reports for France too. Whereas it was mild in England when Asquith headed for the south of France, when he arrived there he would have found it ‘exceptionnellement froid et neigeux’. There was even snow reported in Algeria. On return to Britain, however, he and the rest of the country would then experience a bitter sting in the tail of winter. The week after Easter, night-time temperatures dropped to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) followed by one the heaviest snowstorms ever recorded for April (or any month). These lasted for 4 days with more than 2 feet of snow being recorded along the south coast of England which was the least badly hit.

Following Johnson's and Truss's speedy jaunts up to Balmoral and back in just an afternoon, I was interested to compare their journeys to Asquith's trek down to see the Edward VII at Biarritz in 1908. The following train times I have taken from Cook's Handbook of the Health Resorts of Southern France, the Riviera and Pyrenees (1905) which in turn took its railway information straight from Thomas Cook's international railway timetables, which were published annually. This dates from three years before Asquith's journey but the timetables for international services rarely changed much at that time. The key information that he left from Charing Cross station on the afternoon of 6 April (although if he'd taken the slightly earlier service from Victoria station it really wouldn't have made any difference once he'd got to Paris) and that he arrived at Biarritz on the evening of 7 April, I found in a 2008 Guardian article. The same short Guardian piece also says that he made the journey entirely alone, with no secretary, aide or security - not even anyone to help him with his luggage.

It seems that following Campbell-Bannerman's resignation as Prime Minister on 3 April (on grounds of ill health; he died just 19 days later) Asquith left London on the afternoon of 6 April, catching the 14:20 Paris boat train from Charing Cross (crossing the Channel via Dover and Boulogne) and arriving in Paris Gare du Nord at 21:15 that evening. If he'd been quick and there had been no delays so far, he might have caught the night express due to depart the Quai d'Orsay Station at 22:27 for Bordeaux (due to arrive there at 07:30), Bayonne (10:46) and finally Biarritz (11:05). However it seems he stayed the night in Paris and caught the daily 'Train de Luxe' service bound for Madrid, which left the Quai d'Orsay Station the next day at 12:18, stopping at Bordeaux (19:12), Dax (21:12) and Biarritz (22:10). He thus arrived at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz somewhat late in the evening of 7 April and so had audience and duly 'kissed hands' the following morning (8 April) in the King's private hotel suite. His overall journey time from London to Biarritz (including the 15 hour overnight stay in Paris) was 32 hours.

By comparison in 1988 at the start of a Eurotrain holiday around Spain, Portugal and North Africa, I largely followed the same route. From memory I caught the daily Paris boat train which left London's Victoria Station at about 15:00, (crossed via Dover and Calais, I think) and arrived at Paris Gare du Nord around 22:00. I didn't stop (no money for a room) but crossed quickly by cab to the Gare d'Austerlitz to catch the overnight Bordeaux train (and so slept on that). This was an express train but it was not a high speed TGV. From memory it arrived at Bordeaux sometime in the early hours of the following morning and paused there while the train awaited connections from elsewhere and while parts of the train were decoupled for onward travel. My part, now joined with carriages from other starting places, finally arrived at Irun on the Spanish border and just 30km south of Biarritz at about 7:00am - so a total journey time from London (with minimal stops) of something like 16 hours - that's providing my recollection isn't too far out. Interestingly that's almost exactly the same time as Asquith's journey took in 1908 if you discount his overnight stay in Paris. Nowadays going by train from London St Pancras via Eurostar to Paris and then TGV to Biarritz typically takes about 8 hours in total, with a choice of three connecting departures each day.

That’s brilliant research Meles. It reminds me a bit of the participatory graphic novel set in Paris around 1900 which provided such interest here a couple of years ago. Indeed, the Res Hist thread on that project seemed much busier than its own website which never really seemed to amount to much in the end.

I’m intrigued by the fact that Asquith took taxis both in London and Paris which would suggest that he really was serious about travelling virtually incognito. Also, I’m trying to work out whether those taxis would have been horse-drawn or motorised. I suspect the latter but 1908 does seems to be right in the cusp of the change between those 2 modes of transport so it’s difficult to be sure. I’m also trying to work out if he could have caught the Métro from the Gare du Nord to the Gare d’Orsay had he been so inclined, although I don’t think that there was a Métro station serving the Quai d’Orsay at that time so taking a taxi would have made more sense. That said, the image of an Edwardian Chancellor of the Exchequer lugging his suitcase on and off the trains of the Paris Métro would have been just great in terms of, say, a film drama re-enacting the journey.

I would imagine Asquith was very familiar with taking cabs and trains. His main residence at the time was, according to wiki, a country house in Surrey, but during the week he lived in a grand town house, 20 Cavendish Square in Mayfair (it's now the headquarters of the Royal College of Nursing) and so presumably he took a daily cab down to Westminster (unless he walked, it's not far). On the 6 April 1908 - which was a Monday and probably explains why he didn't leave for the south of France earlier; Campbell-Bannerman having resigned as Prime Minister on Friday 3 April - his train departed at 14:20 from Charing Cross, so he either came from his office at the Treasury (again a short cab ride) or perhaps he went there by train direct from his Surrey home (presumably having changed trains somewhere but I'm not familiar with the rail network at that time).


A postcard of the forecourt of Charing Cross station with both motor and horse-drawn cabs, the card is post-marked 1908.

As you say 1908 was when motor cabs were starting to become much more common (the first motor cabs to operate in London had been licenced only as recently as 1903) but horse-drawn cabs were nevertheless still in widespread use. Paris likewise still had horse-drawn cabs but in 1908, due to the general superiority of French motor vehicle design and manufacture, Paris likely had far more motor cabs than did London. The classic Renault Type AG came into service as a taxi in 1905 with about 1,500 vehicles going into service on Parisian streets in the first year alone, alongside vehicles by other manufacturers (and over subsequent years thousands of Renault AG taxis were also exported to Britain). By the start of the WW1 Paris had over 10,000 motor taxis and of course famously in early September 1914, despite about two-thirds of Paris' cabs having already been requisitioned (and their drivers conscripted) there were still enough left to transport the entire 62nd infantry division (comprising 5 batallions or about 6,000 men) from Paris up to the front to defend the city in the first battle of the Marne (each taxi carried five soldiers, four in the back and one next to the driver). Incidentally the cabbies, following city regulations, dutifully ran their meters all the way ... and the French Treasury duly reimbursed the total combined fare of 70,012 francs.

I rather doubt Asquith would have used a bus, tram or tube/metro, either in London or Paris. While senior politicians could usually walk the streets without much concern for their safety (see the photo below of a fairly unconcerned Asquith continuing to walk along the street while two Suffragettes attempt to argue their cause with him - although note also that he was physically attacked by Suffragettes on a couple of occasions) someone of his social standing and position would never be seen riding on public transport alongside the lower classes (trains, with their entirely separate 1st, 2nd and 3rd class carriages, were an entirely different matter).


Suffragettes Mrs Olive Fergus and Mrs Frank Corbet endeavour to speak to Mr Asquith in the street, circa 1908.


Asquith, now Prime Minister but still seemingly unaccompanied, sitting in an open-topped motor cab in Tavistock Place, Bloomsbury in 1910.

Quite frankly I doubt he would have had many qualms about taking the journey to France unaccompanied. He was quite a big stocky man and in 1908 was just 56 years old. He had plenty of experience of foreign travel around Europe and he was certainly no shrinking violet, having a fondness for food, fine wines, parties and flirting with women, even lecherously so  - he used to write explicit love letters to his mistress, Venetia Stanley, during cabinet meetings and Clementine Churchill complained of his habit of peering down her cleavage, while the socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell protested that he "would take a lady’s hand as she sat beside him on the sofa, and make her feel his erected instrument under his trousers"! So I think we can assume he was - how shall we say it - quite bold and very confident of his appearence, demeanour, charms and talents.

I'm also pretty sure he was competent enough in French to manage the short cab journey across Paris from the Gare du Nord to the station on the Quai d'Orsay. In 1915 at the first wartime meeting of the French and British governments (chaired by Asquith himself) French had to be the working language because, as he recorded in his diary, "not one of the French could speak any English". The situation was not much better on the British side as only Kitchener spoke French fluently. Asquith wrote that "I have never heard so much bad French spoken in my life", which rather suggests his own French, if perhaps not perfect, would have been good enough to check into a Parisian hotel for the night and arrange for a cab the following morning. And yes, even if he been so inclined, he couldn't have taken the Métro because the station serving the Quai d’Orsay railway terminus, Solférino, didn't open until November 1910, while the Gare du Nord's Métro connection did not yet extend south of the Seine. The Quai d'Orsay railway station itself had only been in operation since May 1900 having opened only just in time for the Paris Exposition of that year.

PS : Regarding Asquith's main residence - and in my defence I did say "according to wiki" - this rather more thorough genealogy site says that in the period 1907-11, the Asquiths (he married his second wife in 1894, his first having died in 1891 of typhoid fever while on holiday to Scotland) lived fairly modestly by the standards of the time in a rented country house, Archerfield House, in East Lothian. So all the more reason why he was accustomed to long-distance rail travel. This bit of information also suggests that on Monday 6 April 1908 he likely took a cab from his London town house in Cavendish Square (that address is certainly correct as there's a blue plaque on the wall) either going straight to Charing Cross station (2 kms away) or perhaps with a quick visit to his office at The Treasury in Whitehall, which was basically on the route. I'd like to think that some junior Treasury official went with him at least as far as the station, if only just to pay the cabby, help with his luggage, wish him bon voyage and wave him off from the platform, but maybe he did do the entire trip alone.

Triceratops wrote:

The D'hondt System is used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to calculate allocate some parliamentary seats.

D'hondt system at Stormont

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system was introduced for Irish council elections by the Local Government (Ireland) Act of 1919. This produced an interesting result the following year in Londonderry, where nationalists took a majority of seats on the city council for the first time, albeit ironically on a minority of the votes cast. With nationalist control of the council, the first nationalist Lord Mayor of the city was also elected. The establishment of the Northern Ireland Parliament in 1921, however, saw the use of STV repealed in local council elections and also for elections to the Northern Ireland Parliament. The previously used Single Largest Wins system (SLW a.k.a. ‘first-past-the-post’) was restored. In elections to the UK Parliament, a combination of SLW and the Bloc Vote (BV) were used for Northern Ireland constituencies. When property qualifications and the gerrymandering of ward and constituency boundaries were added, the result was a system ensuring a built-in over-representation of the unionist majority in all elections and at all 3 levels of government in the province. The most extreme manifestation of this was probably in the city of Londonderry where 40% of the votes cast could go to unionist candidates who, nevertheless, would take 60% of the council seats. This state of affairs would last for the next 40 years before slowly beginning to unravel in the 1960s and then rapidly unravelling 40 years on again in the 2000s. Here are some landmark events in the electoral history of Northern Ireland since the 1960s:

1966 – in the UK general election, Belfast (West) elected a nationalist MP for the first time in 60 years.

1972 – the Electoral Law (Northern Ireland) Order reintroduced ‘proportional representation’ (STV) for local government elections.
1973 – in the Northern Ireland border poll, 57% of the electorate voted Remain. The Northern Ireland Assembly Act reintroduced STV for assembly elections. In the Londonderry city council election, the SDLP became the first nationalist party since 1920 to take the most seats while the city's first nationalist Lord Mayor in 50 years was also elected.
1975 – in the UK EEC membership referendum, 25% of the electorate in Northern Ireland voted Yes.
1977 - in the Londonderry city council election, the SDLP received the largest number of votes of any party and also took the most seats.

1983 – in the UK general election, the Foyle constituency (previously Londonderry) elected a nationalist MP for the first time.

1993 - in the Belfast city council election, Sinn Fein became the first nationalist party to receive the largest number of votes of any party.
1997 – Belfast city council elected its first nationalist Lord Mayor.
1998 – in the Good Friday agreement referendum, 57% of the electorate voted Yes. The agreement would see STV continue to be used for electing members to the Northern Ireland assembly while the d’Hondt system would then be used to determine the allocation of the executive from the elected members.  

2001 - in the Belfast city council election, Sinn Fein received the largest number of votes and also took the most seats.
2005 - in the UK general election, Belfast (South) elected a nationalist MP for the first time.
2009 – in the EU parliamentary election, the poll in the Northern Ireland constituency (using STV) was topped for the first time by a nationalist party Sinn Fein.

2010 - in the UK general election, Sinn Fein became the first nationalist party to receive the largest share of the vote of any party.
2011 - in the UK Alternative Vote referendum, 31% of the electorate in Northern Ireland voted No.
2016 – in the UK EU membership referendum, 35% of the electorate in Northern Ireland voted Remain.
2019 - in the UK general election, Belfast (North) elected a nationalist MP for the first time which left Belfast (East) as the only unionist seat in a city which in 1964 had returned unionist MPs in all 4 constituencies (North, South, East and West).

2022 - in the Northern Ireland assembly election, Sinn Fein received the largest share of the vote and took the most seats of any party.

Well Liz Truss didn't last very long as Prime Minister.  I didn't know a lot about her before she took that post.  From the background reading I've done on paper she's intelligent.  She'd been to Merton College and her father is an emeritus professor.  Of course there are people who can be very intelligent but don't have the practical acumen to accompany it.  By the way I'm not making a blanket statement about intelligent people there; plenty do have practical acumen.

We'll see what happens I guess.  I hope they don't bring Boris back.

I agree LiR that the idea of Boris Johnson returning to office seems retrograde. The UK hasn't had a hokey cokey prime minister since Harold Wilson in the 1970s and one might have thought that that sort of thing was consigned to the past. The US, for instance, hasn't had a hokey cokey president since Grover Cleveland in the 1890s and (as far as I'm aware) he was the only example. Before Harold Wilson, however, there were a few hokey cokey prime ministers earlier in the 20th century and several throughout the 19th century. In the 18th century there was only one. That was the Duke of Newcastle who returned to office only 7 months after having been ousted by - wait for it - members of his own party.

I do so miss the elephants - this place used to be packed with them, but now not a Nelly to be seen anywhere. Where on earth have they all gone? 

So much has happened; so much has changed; so much has disappeared from all our lives in the last couple of years - and no one wants to talk about it anymore. Is the future really Netflix and football? A bleak prospect!

The last elephant in the room is there is no elephant...

David Cameron's appointment as UK foreign secretary is certainly unusual. Not since Alec Douglas-Hume was appointed Foreign Secretary in Edward Heath’s government of the early 1970s has a former prime minister returned to government but in a subordinate role. Douglas-Hume had served as Prime Minster between 1963-4.
  
One would need to go back to the early 19th Century and the 18th Century to find other such examples. Lord North, who had had a lengthy innings as prime minister from 1770-82, later served as Home Secretary during the ministry of William Cavendish-Bentinck, the Duke of Portland. Cavendish-Bentinck also had an erratic ministerial career. He was a hokey-cokey prime minister himself, having had 2 terms in office, the first being in the 1780s and other in the 1800s. In between those terms he also served as Home Secretary during the ministry of Willim Pitt the Younger.  

Another feature of parliamentary careers from that era which would strike us today as being unconventional was the phenomenon of former Speakers of the House of Commons then becoming Prime Minister. For instance Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth had been Speaker from 1789-1801 when he then succeeded William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister.
      
Earlier in the 18th Century there was Spencer Compton who had been Speaker of the House for years before his Whig colleague (but personal adversary) Robert Walpole was appointed First Lord of the Treasury (and thus de facto prime minister) in 1721. Compton had hoped for the job of prime minister himself and was disappointed that Walpole had gained the ear of the newly-acceded King George II ahead of him. With Compton having served a 12-year period as Speaker during virtually the whole of the reign of George I, Walpole sought to completely neutralise Compton’s political career and manoeuvre him out of the House of Commons by creating him Earl of Wilmington.

Any conventional assessment would have considered this a masterstroke by Walpole with the now 54-year-old Compton taking up semi-retirement in the House of Lords. But not a bit of it. The change galvanised Compton’s career and from the Lords he was now able to lead the Whig opposition to Walpole’s ministry. Compton’s ‘Patriot Whigs’ became a party within the party. They criticised Walpole for embezzlement of public finances and for incompetence in foreign affairs. In the sphere of foreign affairs Walpole had pursued a pragmatic policy of avoiding war with France and Spain and also retaining a neutralist stance with regard to the various dynastic struggles between the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchies. This policy actually paid dividends for the economy of Britain and its nascent empire but was seen as dishonourable by the Patriots.

Walpole’s phlegmatic approach to foreign affairs, however, was not shared by an over-zealous Spanish coastguard officer who in 1739 badly roughed-up a Welsh merchant-seaman during a routine stop-and-search operation checking for contraband. The seaman, Captain Robert Jenkins, had his ear cut off during the incident and the over-exited Spanish coastguard in question also threatened to the do the same to King George. The Patriot Party was thus gifted propaganda gold against Walpole who was forced by public opinion to go to war with Spain over the incident. His foreign policy now in tatters and losing support in parliament, Walpole resigned after 21 years as prime minister. And King George turned to none other than Walpole’s old rival Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington who, at the age of 68, became Britain’s second Prime Minister.

Vizzer wrote:

Another feature of parliamentary careers from that era which would strike us today as being unconventional was the phenomenon of former Speakers of the House of Commons then becoming Prime Minister.

That does seem strange from a modern perspective: the only Commons Speaker since 1900 I can find that had any sort of senior Cabinet position at all, and certainly not as PM - either before or after serving as Speaker - is Selwyn Lloyd (in office 12 January 1971 to 3 February 1976) who had previously been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Harold MacMillan and before that Foreign Secretary under MacMillan and under Anthony Eden. I suppose that's largely because the Speaker has to be non-partisan and politically acceptable to both sides of the house, so that if they are any good they are repeatedly re-elected each Parliamentary term. They can effectively stay in office as Speaker for many years until they decide to step down, whereupon they usually get a peerage and so 'retire' to the House of Lords. Accordingly since 1900, while there have been 32 changes of PM, there have been only 14 different Speakers.

What is also unusual about Cameron's appointment is that in recent history it has been very rare for major cabinet positions (except Lord Chancellor and Leader of the House of Lords) to have been filled by peers. Cameron's new position is the first time since 1982 that a peer has held any one of the four great offices of state (Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary). Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington [with two 'r's] had been Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in Margaret Thatcher's government since her general election victory in 1979, but resigned on 5 April 1982 following the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands three days earlier. In the 19th century it seems to have been almost de rigueur for the Foreign Secretary to be a peer, but in the 20th century, prior to Lord Carrington, the position had been held by a member of the House of Lords only five other times:
Alec Douglas-Home 14th Earl of Home, 27 July 1960 to 18 October 1963.
Edward Wood 3rd Viscount Halifax, 21 February 1938 to 22 December 1940.
Rufus Isaacs 1st Marquess of Reading, 25 August 1931 to 5 November 1931.
George Curzon 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, 23 October 1919 to 22 January 1924.
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, 12 November 1900 to 4 December 1905.

By contrast the last Prime Minister to have led the government from the House of Lords was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who was in office from 25 June 1895 to 11 July 1902, and also previously PM from 25 July 1886 to 11 August 1892 and from 23 June 1885 to 28 January 1886. Alec Douglas-Home, who became Prime Minister in 1963 whilst still an earl, disclaimed his peerage and was elected to the Commons soon after his term began. Similarly if Lord Halifax, rather than Winston Churchill, had become PM following Neville Chamberlain's resignation in May 1940, I suspect he would have had to relinquish his peerage in order to direct a cross-party wartime government from the House of Commons.

I think one has to go still further back into the 19th century to find a Home Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer that was in office whilst sitting in the House of Lords.

Meles meles wrote:

I think one has to go still further back into the 19th century to find a Home Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer that was in office whilst sitting in the House of Lords.

With regard to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then one would be hard-pressed to find one who was not a sitting MP or a former MP. The reason being that the business of raising taxes is a right which the Commons have jealously guarded for themselves over the centuries. Even to find a law lord who was Chancellor one would have to go back to before Victorian times to 1834 and Thomas Denman who was Lord Chief Justice when he briefly (for 1 month) acted as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Earl Grey’s famously landed Whig ministry. Before Denman there was a peppering of law lords who were Chancellors during the Georgian era but they were few and far between and (as with Denman) held office for very short periods of time usually in an interim, caretaker capacity.

The last peer to be Chancellor of the Exchequer who was not a law lord was Henry Booth, Baron Delamer. He was appointed Chancellor by William of Orange in his first government after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Delamer was a staunch Protestant, an outspoken critic of James II, openly supported William and also had his own private army. William thus rewarded him with the office. Even then, however, Delamer only held it for less than a year before the new king quickly learned the realities of English politics and the job swiftly returned to an MP.
 
William had probably imagined that the Glorious Revolution parliament of 1689 would be a bit like the Cavalier parliament following the Restoration of 28 years earlier. The difference, however, was that the Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes before the Restoration had discredited the House of Commons in the eyes of much of the populace and so the people were willing to give the House of Lords a chance. Consequently, Charles II was able to appoint Anthony Cooper, Baron Ashley, as Chancellor without much complaint from the Commons. Lord Ashley Cooper would remain a Lords-based Chancellor of the Exchequer for a staggering 11 and a half years. This was nearly as long as the 12 and half years which Francis, Lord Cottington had served as Chancellor for Charles’ father Charles I when he had ruled without either the Lords or the Commons. Unlike Ashley Cooper or Delamer, however, Cottington had never been an MP and was only created a baron by King Charles after having already been in the job as Chancellor for 2 years.
 
To find a non-MP peer who was Chancellor of the Exchequer one needs to go back to Charles I’s father James who, on becoming king of England in 1603, moved his court south from Edinburgh to London. His existing Lord High Treasurer for Scotland, Sir George Home was promptly made Chancellor of the Exchequer for England, a unique instance (before the Treaty of Union of 1706) in which both offices were held by the same person. This was an unpopular appointment in the eyes of his new English subjects, and as with William of Orange 85 years later, James soon realised that this could not last. In quick succession, he created George, Baron Hume in England and Earl Dunbar in Scotland before relieving him of the office of Chancellor in 1606 in favour of an English MP. Home did, however, remain as Lord High Treasurer for Scotland until his death 5 years later. George was the great-(x8)-grandparent of the aforementioned British Prime Minister (later Foreign Secretary), Alexander Douglas-Home.

P.S. Meles, you’ve reminded me that I wrote ‘Douglas-Hume’ instead of Douglas-Home. I’m sure that these titled spelling differences, Home/Hume, Carrington/Carington, Althorp/Althrop etc are all just set to trip us up.

Vizzer wrote:

With regard to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then one would be hard-pressed to find one who was not a sitting MP or a former MP. The reason being that the business of raising taxes is a right which the Commons have jealously guarded for themselves over the centuries.

A very good point - I'd rather overlooked that.

Another complication arising from Lord Cameron's appointment is surely his accountability to Parliament. Any major announcements can of course be made by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, while more routine questions concerning the Foreign Office can be answered on behalf of Cameron by his appointed deputy, who, at least for now, is Andrew Mitchell MP, who already attends Cabinet as Minister of State for Development and Africa. However should any questions need to be answered by Cameron personally to the House (not entirely unlikely considering his history of personal involvement in foreign matters and particularly his previous business affairs with China amongst others) the Speaker could order him to be called to the Bar at the entrance to the Commons' Chamber and face questioning from there - rather like an errant schoolboy being summoned to the teacher's staff room to publically account for his bad behaviour, but from the door and forbidden from actually entering the sanctum.

Regarding the Hume/Home and Carington/Carrington confusion, I also got confused when I saw that there was a Lord Carington being present at King Charles' coronation in the exalted position of Lord Great Chamberlain of England. Other than noting the name and vaguely thinking that he must now be very elderly, I gave no more thought to it at the time and just carried on watching the ceremony. But of course it was actually Peter Carington's son, Rupert Carington, now 7th Baron Carrington (still with the second r). He inherited his father's title in July 2018, but in accordance with the House of Lords Act of 1999, the title did not give him the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords (his father had done so as he'd been given a life peerage, Baron Carington of Upton - with one r or two?). Rupert Carington however became a member of the House of Lords in 2018 after winning a crossbench hereditary peers' by-election following the retirement of Lord Northbourne. Then on the accession of Charles III he became Lord Great Chamberlain of England according to the hereditary rotation of the office among three noble families.

Regarding life peerages it is also worth noting that when Cameron loses his Foreign Office job - either when the Conservative Party lose power or if he's just 'reshuffled' - nevertheless David Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, will still hold his seat in the House of Lords, and barring any misfortune is likely to still be there some decades into the future. As indeed will Charlotte Owen, Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge, the former Downing Street aide to Alexander Boris Johnson, who became the youngest person to get a peerage when she was included in Johnson’s controversial 2022 honours list. She is currently just 30 and so unless there is some Parliamentary reform she is likely to still be sitting in the Lords and influencing the government of the UK half a century from now. It seems a rather undemocratic and antiquated system that's open to corruption, with questions about 'selling' peerages for influence or handing them out in return for favours, and as a tactic to out-maneuver either the Commons or the Lords, having come up time and time again over the years.


A 'Punch' cartoon of 1911 showing Asquith and Lloyd George preparing coronets for 500 new peers, to take control of the House of Lords and so force through the Parliament Act.