I suspect that Johnson-nominated peers will not want to share the ‘honour’ that I and a relatively small band of us are enjoying, to stay till midnight or so battling against the inhumanity of the govt’s treatment of refugees in the #IllegalMigrationBill
I told a lie. We have not stopped at midnight. The govt is exerting macho power by forcing us to debate crucial issues about their plans for arbitrary indefinite detention into the early hours of the morning.
I had better restrain what I say about them, it is unprintable
At 00.20 - look it up later - my colleague @Paulscriven gave magnificent vent to his feelings about the govt front bench contemptuously making us debate issues of life & liberty of vulnerable people at this hour of the night, ‘just to be able to wave red meat at the red wall’.
Opposition peers are being punished for raising crucial constitutional issues of the rule of law, whether a politician - the Home Secretary - should be able to detain a person indefinitely unhindered by any judicial power to stop her.
No doubt they thought that forcing (largely elderly) opposition peers to sit till 04.25 would bully us out of raising objections to their law-breaking, authoritarian #IllegalMigrationBill and break our spirit.
It didn’t and it won’t.
I have rubbed along fairly amicably with what I thought were non-rabid Tory peers. But the way even some of them participated in last night’s despicable attempt to bully us into curtailing our objections to the rule-of-law defying #IllegalMigrationBill has removed any blinkers

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More from @SarahLudford

Apr 27, 2022
Only 35 (21%) of @LabourLordsUK voted in favour of this last attempt - by one of their own, Shami Chakrabarti - to get respect for Refugee Conv into this Bill, while @LibDemLords with only half their numbers fielded 72 (87% of us) in favour. If they’d matched us, we’d have won.
And on the #ElectionsBill, only 67 (40% of their 167) @LabourLordsUK voted for Lord Judge’s amendment to uphold @ElectoralCommUK independence while 70 (84% of our @LibDemLords 83) did so.
Again, if they’d voted in same proportion as us, we’d have won - easily.
If you get the sense that I’m cross as hell at Labour tonight, you’d be right. So much opposition, xbench - & even backbench Tory - effort has been put into fighting these nasty Bills, but @LabourLordsUK throw in the towel (presumably under Starmer’s orders) on Ref Conv & EC ind
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26, 2022
“Johnson’s govt is drafting law that would give ministers power to override the NI protocol of Brexit deal..the very treaty that Johnson hailed as ‘great’ ‘excellent’, fulfilment of all his negotiating ambitions. If that were true, he would not now be planning to set it on fire.”
“In the Brexiteer imagination it is an action adventure movie. Brussels has taken a portion of UK sovereignty hostage. Plucky Boris must go in, all guns blazing, to retrieve it. In such escapades of derring-do, playing by the rules & respecting treaties is for remoaner softies.”
“Johnson thinks a British prime minister shouldn’t have to haggle with bureaucrats. He should be stitching something up with Paris and Berlin. That’s how it worked in the old days. But in the old days Britain was a member of the EU. That isn’t how it works for ‘third countries’.”
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26, 2022
“If Finland & Sweden join the alliance [Nato], as they look poised to do, they will bring substantial new military capabilities, including advanced air & submarine capabilities, that will alter the security architecture of northern Europe & help deter further Russian aggression.”
“Important initiatives to strengthen EU defense and security policy integration are underway, but as far as territorial defense is concerned, duplicating the institutions and command structures of NATO would make little sense and won’t happen.”
.@carlbildt:
“And of course, the EU does not include the two nations of greatest military relevance to northern Europe - the United States isn’t a member for obvious reasons, and the United Kingdom isn’t one for regrettable reasons.”
Read 4 tweets
Feb 28, 2022
“Ukrainian woman & 15-year-old diabetic daughter are feeling increasingly distraught after escaping conflict in Ukraine only to be blocked from visa the UK govt announced on Sunday evening for which they are eligible.”

And still we’re being fobbed off by shameful govt answers
“family hoped wd be straightforward to reach UK, after publication of new HO guidance for some family members of British cits to apply free of charge..But when they tried to apply for new visa online they were blocked..unless paid £thousands even tho applic supposed to be free”
“We are getting very worried about my daughter because she is type 1 diabetic and is running out of insulin. We also don’t have a lot of money for food. She needs to eat regularly.”

Oh my goodness, I so much feel for them. My late husb Steve was T1 diabetic, anxiety constant
Read 5 tweets
Dec 26, 2021
“use of public rental vehicles [is] dwarfed by that of an estimated half million illegal e-scooters in Britain.
Legislation has been put on hold amid increasing safety concerns over private unregulated e-scooters”
“influential voices in government suggest that far from switching from cars, most e-scooter users were previously cycling, walking or on public transport, which have better health benefits and environmental credentials.”
“NHS trauma specialists…said they were now treating more and more e-scooter riders, many with ‘life changing head injuries’. One London-based neurosurgeon said the severity of e-scooter riders’ injuries were ‘more similar to those of motorcyclists than pedal cyclists’.”
Read 4 tweets
Dec 25, 2021
“There are suggestions from some in government that Frost – a Brexit purist and fanatical deregulator – came to suspect Johnson had no real plan, no real detailed idea of how to make Brexit work beyond slogans and soundbites.”

Surely not? 😩🙄😢 theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
“The extent of economic damage from Brexit has been made clear by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which predicts that leaving the EU will reduce our long-term GDP by around 4%, compared to a fall of around 1.5% that will be caused by the pandemic.”
“For Johnson the coincidence of Covid and Brexit has proved convenient in one sense, shielding him from blame and obscuring the picture. But economists broadly agree that the long term economic hit from Brexit will be far greater than from the pandemic.”
Read 4 tweets

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