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.
16/06/25 - Labour's schools tax raid sums don't add up
The Daily Telegraph
SIR – At the spending review, Rachel Reeves boasted proudly that she had ended “the tax loophole which exempted private schools from VAT”, a grossly misleading description of the tax exemption that those independent schools which are charities had always enjoyed. She and her party believe they can squeeze £1.5 billion out of independent schools every year. This is sheer fantasy. The unprecedented education tax is forcing families to take their children out of independent schools in far larger numbers than the Government predicted, sharply reducing their ill-gotten gains.
Yet the Labour manifesto last year said that their tax raid on independent schools would pay for 6,500 new expert teachers; increased teacher and headteacher training; work experience and careers advice for all young people; early language development in primary schools; reform of Ofsted; more than 3,000 new nurseries; mental health support for every school; and Young Futures Hubs.
After the spending review, the Prime Miinister tweeted about another boon made possible by the decision to apply VAT to fees: “Today, because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation.” All this from an imaginary £1.5 billion a year. Has there ever been a more fruitful magic money tree?
Lord Lexden
President, Independent Schools Association
London SW1
28/05/25 - Mrs Badenoch and her critics
The Times
Sir, From the moment that Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader 50 years ago, she provided a clear sense of how party policy would be reconstructed while a detailed review was conducted by Sir Keith Joseph. Today, under Kemi Badenoch, no intimination of future policy is to be given until a review is completed. That makes it impossible to rouse the enthusiasm of the dwindling band of Conservative Party members in the constituencies. If there should be yet another leadership contest (“Grassroots Tories plot to oust leader”, news, May 24), the members should pick three or four possible candidates with MPs deciding between them quickly, scrapping the customary process which lasts several debilitating months.
Lord Lexden
Conservative Party historian
26/04/25 - What should be done about the remaining hereditary peers in the Lords?
The Spectator
Sir: It would be good to keep the much-admired 3rd Viscount Stansgate and the other remaining hereditary peers in the Lords by giving them life peerages as Charles Moore suggests (Notes, 5 April). The government may have a plan which it is keeping in reserve. The prospects of compromise have not, however, been enhanced by the party political battles that broke out during prolonged and sometimes bitter discussion of other changes to the composition and work of the Lords that have nothing to do with the 92 hereditaries who remained after the Blair purge. Matters will only get worse if further argument between the government and the Conservatives rages during the final stages of the legislation. The government should call together the leaders of the various groups in the Lords, with the aim of replacing acrimony with agreement. The view of the 180-strong crossbenchers, who back sensible compromise, would be particularly important.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1
31/03/25 - Supermac's triumph
The Critic
It was not as prime minister, as Paul Goodman asserts, but as defence secretary that Harold Macmillan spoke to deferential journalists before leaving for a Nato meeting in Paris in 1954 (“How the press has changed, and how it remains the same”, March).
He departed on 21 October 1954 for talks to try to end a row over the Saarland. As he recorded in his diary, France which had administered it since 1945 threatened to “bring down the whole fabric” of the Western Alliance at the height of the Cold War if the territory was handed over to West Germany.
By the time Macmillan returned on 24 October, amity had been restored thanks to British diplomacy. He noted: “The Germans and the French came to terms over the Saar, and the full series of agreements were signed yesterday afternoon. It has been a real pleasure seeing England leading Europe.” He slipped away by train to Haywards Heath without encountering any more fawning press men.
Lord Lexden
House of Lords
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