Why Labour's plans for further devolution are flawed - Bernard Ingham

After all, it seems to have destroyed any sense of personal responsibility in many people and implanted in their addled brains the idea that they are entitled to work less, preferably from home, for more pay. If so, it will be the ruination of us all.

It is true that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were going off the rails before the pandemic hit us. To complete their disintegration they have now dumped royalty to seek sainthood from the whingerati.

But there is serious concern about the Labour Party, the trade unions and, of course, the wokerati who have made Oxbridge figures of fun.

They are also regularly reducing our national institutions to laughing stocks. The idea that you can go through life without a wrong word being said – or felt offended - is as preposterous as warning students they might be shocked by the goriest of Shakespeare.

First, the Labour Party. It is my considered judgement that Gordon Brown, former PM and Chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer have gone mad. Their proposals for the reform of the constitution and ever more devolution are ample testimony to their derangement.

Under the guise of ending privilege and extending democracy they want to replace the existing House of Lords with an elected assembly representative of the communities and nations of the UK.

I can think of four reasons why they are mad. Have they never heard of the problems created for governments across the world where they have two elected Houses of Parliament under different party control? Is their mission to make governing a democracy more difficult than it already is?

Have they forgotten the consequences of their last act of devolution under Tony Blair which lit the touchpaper of Scottish independence? It seems they have never heard of that either since they now propose to give Scotland its own foreign policy.

How do they think we can defend the British isles in this dangerous world with a pacifist Scotland, Wales not far behind in the independence stakes and Sinn Fein having been wanting to unite Ireland for years?

Is Gordon Brown oblivious after his long spell as Chancellor of the fact that every devolved institution blames the Government for its lack of resources no matter how much it has squandered on vanity projects, low emission neighbourhoods and senior executive salaries?

What we need to retain is a representative revising chamber. I would cheerfully slash the House of Lords to a third of its bloated present but how do you reduce it and get a replacement truly representative of the nation’s wisdom and experience? Answers, please on one side of paper.

Then we have the serious problem of public service unions exhibiting their utter stupidity by putting up the public’s backs with a wave of coordinated strikes ruining Christmas and prejudicing their entire project of replacing the Tories with a Labour Government. Have they not noticed that the latest opinion poll slashed Labour’s lead?

It is not often a vested interest reveals its narrow concentration on itself while cruelly withdrawing vital services from the weak, frail, sick and injured.

This has outraged Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary, who swears Labour will take on the health unions. That remains to be seen when Labour’s union paymasters start to withhold their cash – latest total £15m – from the party.

Just to show the depth of the unions’ economic illiteracy, they persist in seeking to protect their members from the cost- of-living crisis caused by covid and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine by damaging the economy and raising costs and inflation and to hell with the people. So much for their pretence at being on the side of the proletariat. The arrogant insensitivity of company executives in raising their pay by over 20 per cent while denying the poor bloody infantry is not an adequate excuse. They ought to demonstrate more responsibility.

Which brings me to the clearest possible case of damaged mental health: the wokerati. It is scarcely possible to imagine anyone so round the bend that they are preoccupied with the supposed sensitivities of the younger generation while the anti-social media – the internet – pours corruption into them from an early age.