AV, guerilla warfare and a stand-off coming

Things are hotting up in the House of Lords, and it’s not a failure in the air conditioning.

There’s been guerilla warfare by Labour peers which threatens to scupper all or part of the Government bill that brings in the AV referendum and which cuts the number of MPs down to 600.

It seems to have started as a wheeze by some seasoned MPs, many of them only recently arrived in the Lords – they include the former Speaker Michael Martin and a former Labour Deputy Chief Whip.

With some synchronised foot-dragging they’ve managed to get the bill dangerously close to running out of time. The Electoral Commission says you need Royal Assent for a referendum on AV before the February half-term recess. The Lords can only spend so much time on the measure and that time is about to run out.

So there is a stand-off coming and it looks like it is coming on Monday. Life in the Lords normally carries on by agreement, even who speaks next in debates emerges from a polite mutter and deference.

That has broken down over this bill and the Government’s options if it wants to get the measure through are limited. It can “guillotine” or time limit the debates but that has never been done in the Lords. It can force debates through the night until the opposition expires (given the average age in the Lords this is a not necessarily a figure of speech). It could threaten to throw in the towel on the entire bill and claim that Labour peers frustrated the chance for the electorate to express its will on electoral reform.

Or, as Labour peers hope, it can throw in the towel and say, you win, we pull the equalisation of constituencies and 600 MP cap measure (which every assessment shows will hurt Labour more than the Tories) but let the AV referendum go ahead. Some Labour peers and MPs would happily see both elements of the bill go but that would be a trickier position for the Labour Party leadership to defend.

So watch this space on Monday. The chances have got to be that Labour peers wobble, and the normal order of the Lords is restored. But we live in unusual political times and you wouldn’t want to bet the ermine on it.