For far out left Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron's dissolution honours list looks as dissolute and off the planet as it possibly could be.
What was Dave thinking about on his imaginative holidays in Portugal and Cornwall ( Seems it was a "no" again to Far East, Kenya's Great Migration, or even the USA but perhaps they were never considered as not man of the people places)? Even if he'd knocked up this list of cronies and sponsors and hangers on (of all the former main parties) before he went away, surely anyone with political nous would have woken up in the middle of the night sweating that he was just about to fall into a bear/Tory trap of his own making and do a hasty rewrite and cull. Where were his advisors?
The dreary list adds £1.2 m a year to the bill for running the already absurdly large ( in a former life Dave had said he wanted to reduce it) unelected legislative body which is now becoming a blot of Britain's democratic credentials. It looks more and more like an old mates club and less and less a place where some of the nonsenses which get barely a glance in the Commons can be examined in a less political atmosphere.
The 2020 General Election is there for the Conservatives to lose. One of the ways they snatch defeat is to confirm to voters some of Corbyns shouts and dogwhistles about an inward looking,inbred, corrupt and self serving establishment. Even if Corbyn doesn't win the very old Labour crown for sure whoever does will pick up the same theme on this issue. It's just too good for them to miss. Dave's inept, insensitive and appalling list is a step in that direction.
Why does he keep doing this sort of thing? It's probably down to the reality that his life has always been centered in very refined London and Oxfordshire English circles. Genuine encounters with and experiences of the world inhabited by most people have been relatively few. Sensibly he would have very close to him a few "ordinary people" as Labour likes to call them who could steer him away from cliff edges, but he doesn't appear nearly so comfortable with them. His successor will have to be very decisive in putting these images to rest, ideally starting by slashing House of Lords numbers and cleaning up and de-politicising and de-cronyising further appointments from the start. It has to be done before 2020.
