A selection of Lord Lexden's letters this year to The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The New Statesman, The Spectator and others. You can read letters from previous years in the menu to the left.
22/02/25 - How much praise should Airey Neave be given?
The Spectator
Sir: Is Kemi Badenoch right to make a hero of Airey Neave (Politics, 15 February)? His wartime bravery and skill as an intelligence officer should always command unstinting admiration. Political dissimulation, at which Neave excelled (as he showed during the Thatcher leadership campaign fifty years ago), is a quality every successful leader needs, as long as it is deployed with care and thought. But he was never remotely interested in political ideas. He supported Mrs Thatcher to the hilt without ever engaging in economic or social arguments, and was handicapped by being acutely sensitive to media criticism, which irritated his colleagues.
After 1975, he largely confined himself to his shadow cabinet responsibities for Northern Ireland, but in calling for tough new measures against the IRA he was rather overshadowed by Labour’s pugnacious Northern Ireland Secretary, Roy Mason, who implemented them. He formulated a plan to make Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom much stronger, but after his murder in 1979 Mrs Thatcher ditched the policy in favour of power-sharing between Unionist and Nationalist parties, which Ted Heath had introduced and which has carried the day ever since. It is hard to see how Airey Neave’s work can greatly assist Mrs Badenoch’s success.
Alistair Lexden
(Political Adviser to Airey Neave 1977-79)
House of Lords, London SW1
19/02/25 - Should the House of Lords be scrapped?
The Daily Telegraph
SIR - Nigel Farage expresses a widespread view that the House of Lords is too large (Comment, February 13). It is, however, smaller by some 500 members than it was 30 years ago before Tony Blair threw out most of the hereditaries, soon to be followed by the 92 who still remain, despite the fine service that so many have given to the nation.
Whatever changes may be made (such as the removal of everyone over the age of 80, proposed in Labour’s manifesto), the upper house must remain an institution in which legislation is scrutinised in detail, which frequently does not happen in the Commons, and in which grave issues are considerd free from party rancour. Last week, as a Lords deputy speaker, I presided over a debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. It combined intellectual depth with moving eloquence.
The Lords can be Improved, but it should not be destoyed.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
This letter was attacked in the correspondence column of The Telegraph on 21 February by a Mr Sheridan Smith who asserted quite astonishingly that the Lords should not amend legislation that had been through the Commons. Alistair Lexden replied to him in a further letter published on 22 February.
SIR - I say to Mr Sheridan Smith: remember the guillotine. Not the kind that would cut off the heads of us useless peers, but the guillotine motions in the Commons that routinely cut off debate on Bills before swathes of clauses have been considered
Hundreds of amendments are passed each year in the Lords, with cross-party backing and the full agreement of ministers, to rectify what the Commons has left undone.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
17/02/25 - Chamberlain and Churchill in partnership
The Times
Sir, The letter written by Neville Chamberlain shortly after his resignation as prime minister in May 1940 (“Chamberlain felt better out of No 10”, news, Feb 13) displays a lack of recrimination and disappointment that is rare in politics. Despite the onset of the cancer that was to kill him six months later, he took on a huge burden of work, freeing Churchill to run the war. His private secretary noted “his incredible capacity for work and his apparent immunity from fatigue continue.” Churchill was distraught when he died. “What shall I do without poor Neville?” he said. “I was relying on him to look after the home front for me.”
If Chamberlain had remained in harness with Churchill throughout the Second World War, posterity would today give him the honour that he deserves.
Lord Lexden
Conservative Party historian and author, Neville Chamberlain: Redressing the Balance