INSIDE WESTMINSTER: How Wardrobegate ruined PM's plan to purge peers

It is being described in the Upper Chamber as 'the biggest purge of peers since Oliver Cromwell'.

Stage one on the path to total abolition of the Lords is the plan to force members over 80 to retire and remove the few remaining hereditaries.

In the short term, this requires the Prime Minister to create dozens of new Labour barons and baronesses in order to level numbers with the Tories, who currently dominate Sir Keir's party by 273 to 185 in an 800-strong chamber, before moving on to the wider constitutional overhaul.

Playing the role of John Thurloe - Cromwell's secretary of state in the turbulent years following Charles I's execution - in this process is Chief of Staff Sue Gray.

Not only does her pen hover over the new appointees; but she is also predicted to join the list herself if the rows over her dysfunctional hold on Downing Street become too distracting.

That, however, was before the 'freebies and cronies' row rocked Starmer's fledgling administration, centred on the mysterious figure of Lord Alli and the munificence he has dispensed in the form of free clothes and glasses to the PM, his wife and his most senior colleagues.

A Cabinet source said: 'The Lord Alli row has ruined everything. The idea was to send dozens more of our supporters to the Upper Chamber by Christmas. That would have given us the numbers to push ahead with the abolition of the remaining hereditaries and pension off anyone over 80. But how can Keir do that now? What will it look like if the country sees all his mates swanning into the Lords, draped in ermine just as pensioners are having their winter fuel support axed?'

Even Tony Blair's removal of most hereditary peers in 1999 pales into insignificance beside Sir Keir's constitutional ambitions: 'Labour will end the chaos of sleaze and division, turn the page, and reset politics to put it back in the service of working people,' he has pledged.

Seasoned Lords' observers were therefore braced for an announcement before the end of the year, potentially under cover of a separate Resignation Honours list by outgoing Tory leader Rishi Sunak.

But that timetable has been thrown into chaos by Lord Alli. 'Everyone we were planning to appoint is now going to have to be re-vetted', a minister said. 'If we shove someone in there, then a couple of weeks later some skeleton comes rolling out of their cupboard, it will blow everything up again.'

Amomg the names being mentioned as potential new Labour peers is Sr Tony Blair's former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, who played a key role in the controversial negotiations which have led to the surrender of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Mr Powell, however, has been cool on the idea of a peerage in the past and No 10 will be wary of honouring him for a perceived 'betrayal'.

Deborah Mattinson, the PM's former pollster, has also been spoken of as a future Labour peer.

A taste of precisely the sort of negative headlines that could be generated by a raft of new peerages was provided in the High Court last week, in the shape of the ongoing divorce proceedings between Labour donor Dale Vince and his wife Kate.

A submission from Mrs Vince's legal team accused the eco-millionaire of finalising their divorce in 'haste' as he expected to receive a peerage or knighthood from Sir Keir and wished to prevent her from acquiring a title through marriage.

Labour insiders say Starmer is now working of a streamlined list of 30 peers that he wants ushered into the Lords by next summer. But even this plan is now reportedly being held up by a row between Downing Street and Mr Sunak over the ex-PM's own peerage list.

'There's a big argument going on over Rishi's resignation honours,' a senior Conservative source revealed. 'Starmer wants Rishi to cut his names down because for every new peer Rishi gets to appoint, Keir has to increase the number of names on his own list, or he doesn't get the boost in numbers he needs to get his reforms through the Lords.'

But some Cabinet Ministers think the idea of announcing dozens of new Labour peerages in the current political climate is simply too politically toxic.

One said: 'Look at how No 10 have managed Wardrobegate. They have poured petrol everywhere, lit it and then just as it was all dying down, brought in a petrol tanker and set fire to everything all over again. If we start cramming people into the Lords now, one or two of them are bound to have a history. And then the cycle begins again.'

Some other Labour veterans are still scared from the 2007 'cash for honours' allegations that the Blair government had offered peerages in return for donations. No charges were ever brought but it led to Sir Tony becoming the first PM to be questioned by police in the course of an investigation albeit it as a witness, rather than a suspect.

Unfortunately for Sir Keir, many others in his party see wholesale constitutional reform as vital to countering the charge that 'all the politicians are the same'.

And chief among their number is another ex-Labour PM - Gordon Brown. It was his seminal 2022 report calling for the 'indefensible' unelected House of Lords to be replaced by a new democratic second chamber called the 'Assembly of Nations and Regions' which forms the basis of Labour's 2024 manifesto commitment to consult on consigning the house of peers to history and replacing it with an 'alternative second chamber'.

That is exactly what Cromwell himself did in 1649 just a few months after the death of the King and the establishment of a republic.

The House of Lords returned with the monarchy in 1660.

Perhaps Lord Alli has inadvertently given the historic chamber a further stay of execution.