Climbing The Nylon Ladder

It is all good fun to speculate, as Simon Jenkins does, on the rumours that Michael Bloomberg might seek the position of Mayor of London.

If he were an Irish, Commonwealth or EU citizen resident in the United Kingdom, then he would be perfectly within his rights to vote and stand in a local election in this country. If he were from the Irish Republic or the Commonwealth, then he could stand for Parliament and in principle become Prime Minister.

It is difficult to see why, having been the Doge of New York, Bloomberg would want a position with as little power as was enjoyed by the Mayor of London. There would in any case be all sorts of grounds on which to oppose him politically. But his nationality would not be one of them.

With David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne all known to support the lowering of the voting age to 16, and with Theresa May not known to oppose it, damage limitation is going to be in order, with the need to press for a requirement that jurors and parliamentary candidates be at least 25.

I want to oppose lowering the voting age. But I know a lost cause when I see one, and thus the need to make the best of it. Remember the conditions that I wanted to attach to same-sex civil marriage, for example, such as enabling couples and religious organisations to choose to have their marriages bound by the pre-1969 divorce laws.

Nor do I especially relish siding with the most vocal opponents of this change, the irreconcilable Blairites who cannot forgive Ed Miliband for having thought of it. Tony Blair would not have voted when he was 16, and he probably did not vote when he was 18 or 21. But Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband would have voted when they were 12 if they had had the opportunity. I am not exaggerating.

As part of this legislation, it is possible that Liam Fox and his allies will seek to remove the voting rights of Irish citizens as such (whereas they would retain their local voting rights as EU citizens) and of Commonwealth citizens. That ought to be countered by and with a proposal to abolish the nationality aspect altogether in voter registration, while requiring that candidates for Parliament be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland.

That would challenge Fox, and others of like mind and associations, to explain why they did not wish to enfranchise Britain's, and especially London's, Americans, Israelis, and subjects of the Gulf monarchs in whose defence we are currently at war, with every likelihood of remaining so well into the 2015 Parliament.

In similar vein, there is to be the devolution of further powers to the Scottish Parliament. That needs to include a clause specifying that legislation in the newly devolved areas would have effect only subject to a confirmatory resolution of the House of Commons, unless it had been passed at Holyrood by the majority of those MSPs who had made a prescribed public declaration of commitment to the continued existence of the United Kingdom with Scotland as an integral part of that Kingdom.

Although diffused among several parties and none, there is a Unionist majority in Scotland. That majority's ultimate legislative protector is, of course, the House of Commons.

Speaking of irreconcilable Blairites, this seat will not become vacant until one of them is 48, if not 53. Unlike some of us, he remains in good health, at least so far as one can tell. But he is probably older than the next Leader of the Labour Party, and he is certainly older than the next Leader but one. As am I, but that is hardly the point.

He used to become very agitated when defending to me such achievements as the degradation of Shotley Bridge Hospital, the invasion of Iraq, and the abolition of Derwentside District Council. Unlike me, at least in those days, he was also a passionate defender of all-women shortlists. Those are most unlikely to exist by the time that this seat becomes vacant. But by then, he will be 48, if not 53.