Robert Marshall-Andrews

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Nothing personal, Lord Irvine, you just have to go (from The Sunday Times)

Let us praise pomp and circumstance, the trappings of office, the ermine gown and the peacock throne. As we, the happy elect, pass our laws in the neo-Gothic gloom of Westminster and mutter in the corridors of doubtful power, let us pay homage to the wigs and gowns, the maces and swords, the bucklers and bodkins, the groaning wallpaper, the art, the beds and the lavatory that Pugin could have made.

For it is all of immense importance and it is all of no value at all. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," wrote Rabbie Burns; and even Solomon in all his glory failed comparison with the lilies of the field, which neither toiled nor span. The whole lot is worth a king's ransom and infinitely less than one decent, dull, elected politician.

In this, let us observe the quite elementary truth about the trappings of office. However grand and however gross they are, they serve ultimately to diminish rather than enhance the egos they seem to support.

The statue of Ozymandias and the pyramids of Egypt have demonstrated for millenniums the futility of the pharaohs and have mocked their claims to the divinity they craved. Ten thousand died in the building of Cheops but as the royal bones rotted in the sarcophagi, the slaves had the last sepulchral laugh.

All dynasties are the same. The Medici were fearsome: some wise, some wicked, some famous and all flawed. But set them beside their own works, the Duomo, the Bap tistry or Bargello, and they are small beer indeed.

So with the refurbishment of the House of Lords. The creation of great works and designs within the Palace of Westminster is not intended to enhance or gratify the ego of the incumbent lord chancellor or his successors.

Nor will it do so. Lord Irvine's personal interest in the process may have been maladroit in manner and substance but it is of minimal significance when compared to the grand intent to provide a background within which the holders of this office, for the next millennium, will be harmlessly reduced to what they are, human beings charged with the burden of public stewardship.

Lord chancellors will come and go, some will be popular and respected, others arrogant and disliked, some will be pure, some dogged by scandal. All, however, will inhabit a canvas of vast dimensions and rich colour, illuminated by fine art, the joy of craftsmanship and the finest wallpaper money can buy.

And so it should be. To the holder of office this canvas speaks from the very walls: "This is the finest your country can provide and it will last for ever. It is you who will pass away."

So why the fuss? Why the apparent persecution of the lord chancellor, snobby jokes about B&Q do-it-yourself stores and the cries of "foul" to Downing Street itself? What has caused this headlong pursuit of so improbable a victim?

Lord Irvine's politics, in so far as they are known, are closely asso ciated with the prime minister to whom he is an established and self-proclaimed mentor. His intelligence is legendary and his absence of political experience does at least imply that he carries no baggage of political animosity.

So why the fuss? It may be asserted with total confidence that it is nothing to do with wallpaper or long unseen, unsought and buried Scottish art. Nor is it founded in personality. Assertions of arrogance are generally unaccompanied by evidence and, in any event, personalities seldom attract such substantial attack.

So why are "they out to get me"? The answer, paradoxically, lies in the nature of the aspirations of this government. The banner of Blair is the banner of modernisation. This is the central tenet of new Labour. The ark of the silicon covenant. Into the despised dustbin of political history it has decanted the ancient power abuses of the collective left, the block vote, the smoke-filled room, the beer and sandwiches, the conference fix - all are swept away.

True, the apostates of the middle classes now sit in the middle ground on a myriad committees engaged on a thousand reviews, but they are a temporary phenomenon. A diet of terms.

But elsewhere total rigour applies. Local councillors, reeling under welfare to work, school initiatives and planning directives are lectured on the virtues of total probity, and members of parliament receive stern reminders that they are ambassadors to their constituents and shepherds to their flocks.

Rigorous accountability is all. Into this vernacular the name of the people ceaselessly intrudes. This is the people's government, serving the people's ministers (and adoring the late people's princess). We belong to them. We are the people's party. No longer do we serve faction, class or religion. The franchise has not been employed for vested interests or economic advantage, it has been used to establish the public good, achieving legitimacy from the public will and the overwhelming voice of the ballot. We have come home.

In the middle of this modern manifestation of popular will sits the lord chancellor, whose executive office is the embodiment of the ancient patronage of monarchs. It reeks of the politics of princes and the largesse of kings. This is the true rea son for the lord chancellor's problems.

His carpets and curtains, his paintings and beds are but alibis for a greater indictment for which he has simultaneously no responsibility, no guilt and no defence. He does not belong to the people. When we came home, history left him in an alien world.

This is the root of public unease and the fuel for a hostile press. At the very heart of government there is immense, unelected and unaccountable power relying for political oxygen only on the patronage of the prime minister. It is simply impossible to contemplate reform of the House of Lords which does not radically curtail this executive role in favour of an elected secretary of state sitting in and answerable to the House of Commons.

Ironically, this simple premise was supported in 1992 by the Labour party modernisers and traditionalists alike, and by John Smith; a happy mixture of pragmatism and common sense.

The problem must be faced. New Labour is a great modern party with a great modern agenda to achieve. As our backbenchers struggled all night through the lobbies to establish the national minimum wage we did so with a profound sense of history. No adult would lawfully work again for the wages of a serf. A part of our feudal legacy was finally interred. That is why I have sponsored a Commons motion calling for the office of lord chancellor to lie with it.