There are all kinds of legitimate positions about reform of the House of Lords. All elected, all appointed, some combination of both, even the abolishment of the house altogether.

But saying that the issue is not important is not a legitimate position.

The composition and format of one of the two chambers of a national legislature is an issue of major, long term importance, even if elections are not won or lost on the basis of it. A non-elected chamber would be considered abhorrent in almost any developed country and it’s high time the issue was examined.

The man on the street, to use David Davis’s line cited here, might rightly want the government to focus on job creation, but if the UK had a sensible and mature political culture there should be no problem working on both this and constitutional reform. Parliament should be capable of debating matters of constitutional importance and passing bills to sort out the economy. Further, it’s not as if there is a whole line of growth-generating bills just ready to be debated that are being blocked by Lords Reform – the government already has the austerity it wants.

Instead people like Davis and Bernard Jenkin, with the press complicit in their game, are happy to tie the issues together. Rather than opposing reform of the House of Lords on its merits, they instead aim to to kick the issue off the agenda by claiming something else is more important. It’s a disingenuous tactic.