Nigel's problem

It's the 1st of October 2029. Prime Minister Farage won the general election in July with a small overall majority and, as a result of incredible party discipline, got his flagship policy of scrapping net zero legislation through the House of Commons.

That's that then - we'll start building coal-fired power stations again. But not so fast; getting a Bill through the Commons doesn't make it law. First it has to be passed by the House of Lords, where it will be supported by...how many Reform peers? Well at the moment they have just...none. What is Nige gonna do about this?

This is the current makeup of the House of Lords:

Conservative Party 283 

Labour Party 210 

Crossbench group 178 

Liberal Democrats 75

Others 80 (including 23 bishops - no knights, rooks or pawns, although you could argue that all members of parliament are pawns when they slavishly pass through the Aye lobby to support their party)

The Labour government gets its Bills through the Lords with the help of enough crossbench members and the Salisbury-Addison convention that says the Lords won’t block Bills that were in the winning party’s manifesto. But how can a governing party with no members in the Lords at all hope to prevent the second chamber destroying its policy platform?

Some obvious answers:

• create hundreds of Reform-supporting peers to provide a majority
• Make a pact with the Conservative party to support its manifesto Bills

But there's a nuclear option. By including a commitment to abolish the House of Lords in their election manifesto, they could argue that the convention means the Lords have to agree to their own abolition.

That sounds fun.