No "Checking of Privilege" Here

The House of Lords "Roars" In Defence of Its Privileges

The House of Lords in the UK has besmirched itself.  It has thrust its oar into the Brexit process with a silly stipulation that Euro citizens now living in the UK must not be disaffected by Britain's withdrawal from Brussels.

The cynic's view of this startling contribution to human civilisation is to laugh--a lot. The optics for the Lords are not good.  Here is a bunch of privileged, non elected elitists pontificating about the rights of EU citizens now living in the UK.  Here also are a bunch of people attempting to protect their own interests, sinecures and subsidies many of which come via the largess of Brussels.

Internationalism is so good because Brussels sends lots of lovely mullah to subsidise the farming estates of some members of the House of Lords.

 And then there are all those advisory committees, regulatory bodies, and well-funded regulatory organs within the realm of the Eurocrat mandarins.  So many of the elites, including many members of the House of Lords, end up on endless bureaucratic confabulations.  It's good for the image of the gnomes of Brussels to have Lord Haw Haw or Lady Muck sitting on their boards or committees.  It adds to the gravitas of the whole enterprise.

So the House of Lords has set its cap against the will of the people of Britain.  It has chosen to pursue its own self-interests, albeit cloaked with a professed concern about the rights of non-British EU citizens presently living in the UK.

We will see how this plays out.  Our expectation is that the Lords will be swatted away by the Commons rejecting the Lords' fiddling with the Brexit Bill which has already passed with such a strong majority in the Commons.  The House of Lords has already anticipated this, by intimating that if the Commons subsequently rejected its fiddling, it would not take the matter any further.  But maybe not.

The government said it was “disappointed” by the Lords’ amendment, and will now have to choose between trying to overturn the measure in the Commons or agreeing to guarantee the rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens here.  Emboldened by the sizeable defeat in the Lords, as many as 30 Tory MPs could join a rebellion in the House of Commons, possibly delaying Brexit or forcing the government to include the amendment, Baroness Meacher, a crossbench peer, told BBC Radio 4.

However, ministers told Sky News they remain confident Article 50 will be invoked by the 31st of this month, with a spokesman for the Brexit Department commenting:  “The bill has a straightforward purpose – to enact the referendum result and allow the Government to get on with the negotiations.”

 The bill is expected to return to the Commons on 13 and 14 March. A similar amendment has already been rejected by MPs, and if they do so again, it will then “ping pong” back to the Lords. The Lords may not reject it again.  [Breitbart News]

One way or another, it's going to be entertaining.