Moving the House of Lords to the north is a pointless gesture at best – it’ll do nothing to ‘level up’ Britain

No member of Boris Johnson’s government is currently permitted to appear on TV, radio or at the dispatch box of the House of Commons without using the phrase “level up” at least five times.

Borrowed from the world of video gaming, as with all political phrases it is designed to be devoid of meaning but it intimates at a promise to make life better in parts of the country that have not been served as well by the economic changes of the last 50 years as London and the southeast.

And now we have had our first taste of what “levelling up” might mean. Johnson has let it be known he is investigating moving the House of Lords to York, permanently.

It is, of course, a gimmick. What northern England, and indeed southwestern England, Wales, the midlands, and everywhere else in between, needs is proper infrastructure investment, functioning buses and trains, and better job opportunities (and on the last front, no government project will be able to make up for the damage already done by Johnson’s principle achievement in public life – Brexit).

Derelict government-owned land behind York railway station has been touted as the most likely destination. A chamber of government would actually be built there.

It is a Johnson idea that follows in a noble tradition: the island estuary airport (rejected by feasibility study); the garden bridge (rejected after £40m of public funds were spent on precisely nothing); the docklands cable car that recent data revealed to have just four regular commuters.

Then there are London’s new Routemaster windowless sauna buses, which cost more than £3.6m annually just in fare evasion. There is no time here to go into the details of the Olympic Stadium deal Johnson personally negotiated with West Ham United, but the needless loss to the public purse stands at around £300m.

The House of Lords is one of the world’s great anachronisms. In a democratic country, it is morally indefensible. It survives largely because the public has better things to care about than what it views as some harmless old duffers not really doing very much. It is hard to see that state of things continuing if plush, new offices are constructed to shine a light on the House of Lords’ unjustifiable role in our constitution.

It is also noted that the relocation forms part of a commission that will examine “the role of the Supreme Court and the lord chancellor”. So we should not in any way be surprised that the relocation of the House of Lords is in fact a mere talking point, to disguise attention from the real mission at hand, namely retribution for the Supreme Court having had the temerity to fulfil its constitutional function and restore parliament after Johnson’s outrageous vandalism last autumn.

Moving the House of Lords to York will make the functioning of Westminster harder, and will achieve nothing, beyond a headline. The evidence that such things are all that Johnson cares about is overwhelming.

Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely ever to happen, and quite right too.