Thread by @JanekLasocki

1/ There are many reasons why it was wrong to ennoble Evgeny Lebedev. Here are three (1) the brazen cronyism (2) how it puts back further reform of the House of Lords (3) the Russia connection

THREAD

https://twitter.com/PARLYapp/status/1339619169965367298

2/ FIRST: Cronysim. There’s no hiding 40-year old Lebedev is a close friend of the Prime Minister
There were the parties at Castello di Santa Eurasia or the backing for Johnson’s mayoral campaign..
No one seriously believes this isn’t why he's now a Lord
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…

3/ Well ok, I hear you say, but rewarding political allies like this isn’t really anything new. As @TheEconomist put it “Every prime minister comes into office promising to reform the Lords only to end up treating it as a patronage pissoir”.
economist.com/britain/2020/0…

4/ And yet the list of which Lebedev was part seems a particularly brazen example. The brother of the current Prime Minister, husband of the former PM, Brexit campaigners and.. a media tycoon who is a close friend of the PM.

5/ This also comes in a year when the government has used Coronavirus to award friends enormous contracts, on a scale that seems unprecedented and in a way that’s difficult not to openly call corruption.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

6/SECOND,the appointment of these new peers shows the govt’s contempt for institutions of the state & is a step back4Lords reform. @ConUnit_UCL (among others) has written extensively about the need to reform: the size of the chamber &how members are chosen
constitution-unit.com/2020/07/31/bor…

7/ At over 800 members, the House of Lords is too big – in the whole world the only chamber that is larger is the Chinese People’s Congress. A committee led by Lord Burns recommended reducing total membership to 600, endorsed by @CommonsPACAC

8/ Under PM Theresa May there was actually some progress – now reversed.

9/ Then there’s HOW Lords are chosen. Tony Blair created the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), a body that was meant to appoint the majority of future Lords to prevent the Prime Minister from filling the chamber with party hacks.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

10/ But the Prime Minister never lost the powers to choose who to appoint (or when). In consequence, only one in ten appointments have been made by the Commission. Johnson’s appointments have been exactly in a way HOLAC was set up to prevent.

11/ If it isn’t to be an elected chamber, the House of Lords could represent the best of academia, civil society, business and other sectors. And yet this is what we have.

12/ THIRD – the Russia connection. Lebedev’s appointment came days after the release of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report into Russian influence – a report that was suppressed to not coincide with the 2019 election that brought Johnson to power.

13/ The ISC report warned that Russian money was corrupting the U.K. and concluded that the state had “taken its eye off the ball” when it came to Russian influence.

14/@MarkGaleotti: “given that the real source of [Lebedev’s] money essentially is his father - a man who has.. ‘mended his relations’ with the Kremlin - then this is seen by many as an example of the very kind of cronyism the [ISC] was warning about.”
themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/03/leb…

15/ It’s important not 2hyperbolise the “Russian threat”. There are many other countries &sources of money to be careful of. Lebedev is also a British citizen so no less eligible in principle: a potential Lord should be judged on what they can contribute not where they were born.

16/ But what sort of a message has B.Johnson sent with this?
That he has little intention to take institutional reform seriously, and that political influence in Britain can be bought regardless of the impact on credibility of government or of any security concerns.
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