I’ve just returned from the Hackney Empire, where this year’s pantomime, Aladdin, was noisily enjoyed by a full house and proving yet again that you don’t need either Pamela Anderson or a theatrical knight playing the dame to deliver the best seasonal entertainment in London.

And at the risk of sounding pious, multi-ethnic Hackney (which becomes that well-known suburb on the eastern side of Peking, Ha-ka-ney) and the melting-pot of cultures that make up modern London are not only appropriately reflected in the mixture of musical styles and language of the performance but enhance its vitality and humour.

What is more, tonight’s entertainment was enlivened by the sight of no less a personage than Professor Tony Travers, Director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, sitting in the stalls – and desperately  trying to maintain his customary gravitas while joining in the words (and the actions) of “The Panda Mime Song”.

A local Liberal Democrat councillor sidled up to me while I was waiting for a bus in Crouch End earlier today (side note: the wait was another example of the stealthy degradation of the bus service since the election of Mayor Boris Johnson) to tell me that he thought the Greens were doing very well in Stroud Green.  He confirmed what I have been hearing from other sources that the Green Party with its radical edge and apparent principled approach to policy is beginning to make Liberal Democrats in London very jumpy that they are being outflanked.

Apparently, their fear is that the Cameron-lite approach being adopted by Nick Clegg is turning off many people who might otherwise be their supporters and that the voters they are losing are turning to the Greens (paticularly now that climate change is so topical and becoming a more significant political issue).  This is clearly bad news for sitting MPs like Lynne Featherstone and Sarah Teather …..

I am delighted to hear that Baroness Cathy Ashton is to be the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs.  Typically, there has been some sniping from Tory Euro-phobes like Timothy Kirkhope MEP, demonstrating yet again that the Conservative Party have difficulty understanding what the term “national interest” means in the context of the European Union.

Why is this good news?

Firstly, it is recognition of the hugely impressive work she has put in as EU Trade Commissioner – following on the similarly impressive role played by her predecessor, Lord Peter Mandelson.

Secondly, the new role is going to be pivotal in the EU and may at least initially turn out to be more significant than the part played by the new President and having a Briton right at the heart of the EU will ensure that the UK is not sidelined.

This is particularly important now that the Conservative Party have taken themselves out of the Centre-Right mainstream by the bizarre decision to withdraw their MEPs from the EPP grouping.  In the event (remote, of course) of there being a Conservative Government after the next General Election, it will be important for the UK’s standing in Europe that the UK is not seen as being only represented by swivel-eyed phobics.

Thirdly and most importantly, she will do a good job.  She demonstrated as Leader of the Lords that she could build consensus (she was genuinely a Leader of the whole House and not just of the Labour benches), and as a Minister that she could master complex detail (steering hugely complicated and difficult pieces of legislation through the House – not least the Bill ratifying the Lisbon Treaty).

My only regret is that this means that she will remain on “Leave of Absence” from the House of Lords while she remains in post.

And, of course, I also feel sorry for her husband Peter Kellner, who was one of my local Labour Party members when I held my first political office as a Party Branch Secretary when I was still at school almost 40 years ago.  I bumped into him a few weeks after Cathy’s appointment as EU Trade Commissioner, greeting him with the words “When did you last see your wife?” and detected a whiff of sadness when he replied defensively “Sunday night”.

It is likely to be “nasty, brutish and short”.

Tomorrow is the Queen’s Speech and I know no more than anyone else about what will be included, but in any event the reality is that few if any of the Bills announced tomorrow will make it in to law before Parliament is dissolved for the General Election.

Look at the arithmetic.

The House of Lords will in practice be the limiting factor.  There are normally three sitting days each week in the Lords for Government business.   (This rises to four in July and October, but that is not relevant to this calculation.)

After the Queen’s Speech debate finishes next week, there will be ten full days available for Government business before  Parliament rises for the Christmas Recess on 16th December and one of these is already allocated for a full day of consideration of the Eames Report on reforms to the House of Lords Code of Conduct (and another day may also be lost to consideration of the Senior Salaries Review Board review of House of Lords allowances).  At best, this means nine days before the end of December.

Parliament reassembles on 5th January and rises again for a “half-term” recess on 10th February.  This provides another seventeen days for Government business.

Parliament then restarts on 22nd February and is unlikely to run past the end of March before the Easter break and the likely dissolution of Parliament for a May General Election.  This gives at best another eighteen days for Government business.

No more than 44 days in total.

Most of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech will begin their passage in the House of Commons.  This is the norm for controversial Bills and for “flagship” pieces of legislation (as most of the Bills to be announced tomorrow are likely to be).  Such Bills cannot reach the Lords until they have completed their Commons’ stages.  so as a result, nothing substantial is likely to be ready for Lords’ consideration until end-January at the very earliest.

Three Bills have been the subject of Carry Over motions and have already had some consideration in the Commons.  In theory, these might reach the Lords a little earlier.  However, none are likely to get a swift passage once they get there.

One is the Equality Bill, which is substantial and likely to receive particularly rigorous line-by-line consideration in the Lords.  Another is the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which is also wide-ranging and because of some of the changes proposed in it for the House of Lords and, in particular, the remaining hereditary peers is also likely to attract especially thorough (and slow) Lords scrutiny.

So how many Bills will emerge from the 2009/10 Parliamentary Session as Acts?  My guess is no more than a handful – and possibly none of the major ones.

They will all have to wait for a reinvigorated Labour Government to announce them in the Queen’s Speech next June ……

The BBC has picked up on yesterday’s mini-row about the curse of “Reply All”.  What started the problem was an email from Mark Pritchard MP asking, what he no doubt thought was an innocuous question, about who might be interested in joining a new All-Party Group on Cyber-Security.  He had sent it to all MPs and Peers on the Parliamentary email system.  This in itself is not uncommon.

Derek Wyatt MP then responded to say – I paraphrase – that, as one of the handful of Parliamentarians interested in and knowledgeable about cyber issues, he  hadn’t known that Mark Pritchard was also concerned about such matters, that there were a number of other All-Party Groups in existence that looked at cyber questions and, given the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups in general, was an additional one really necessary.  Perhaps in an effort to stifle the fledgling prior to birth he pressed the “Reply All” button and sent his comment to all MPs and Peers.

This then prompted, first, a cascade of MPs and Peers agreeing with him that there were far too many All-Party Groups (all sent using “ReplyAll”) and, second, a torrent of MPs and Peers complaining about the excessive use of the “Reply All” button (some of them were quite intemperate in tone, typed in capitals and used red ink) but also – no doubt to emphasise how irritating it was – sent “Reply All”.

There are, of course, two issues here.

The first is why for so many people is it their default reaction when responding to something to tell an entire mailing list that unfortunately they cannot attend a particular meeting or whatever it might be.  No doubt, it is assumed that their presence or otherwise is so crucial that the response of others will be determined by what they say.   This is sheer arrogance.  If they are that self-important, there are other outlets – they could take up blogging, for example.

Parliamentarians are not, in fact, the worst offenders.  I find members of the London Assembly and their staff are even more profligate with the “Reply All” button.

The second issue is the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups these days.  If you want to count them, look here.  There are so many that it is often impossible for them to find a room, however small, in the Parliamentary Estate for a meeting.  Often there are so many competing Groups meeting simultaneously that most of them are lucky to get more than two or three Parliamentarians even to look in for a few minutes.

And just for the record I responded to Mark Pritchard saying this was a topic I was interested in and in which over the last few years I had been actively involved.  I didn’t press “Reply All” – my reply was just to him – but I also said I had some sympathy with the view that the issue could be pursued ender the umbrella of one of the existing groups.

A pager message to Labour Peers had to go through several drafts this afternoon before it was considered to be in a fitting state to send out.  In the end, the message said:

“Votes are expected after dinner on prostitution.  Colleagues are asked to stay for this important business.”

This was a reference to the amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats which would aim to remove or delete the clauses of the Policing and Crime Bill which make it a “strict liability offence” for somebody to pay another person for sex, if that person has been trafficked or is being coerced into being a prostitute.   (It would not be a defence for the person paying to claim that hadn’t known that the prostitute was trafficked.)

Apparently, the original pager message had said something along the lines of:

“We will move on to prostitution after dinner.  Please be ready ….”

There was a concern about Peers who might have left their pagers at home and whose spouses might read and misinterpret the message.

Sean O’Neill in his blog at The Times is today suggesting that Ian McPherson, the current Chief Constable of Norfolk, is a shoe-in to be appointed as Assistant Commissioner (Territorial Policing) of the Metropolitan Police by a Panel of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) next week.

As a member of that Panel, I can state categorically that there is nothing foregone about the process we will be undertaking.

None of the candidates are internal and they are essentially unknown quantities to most of the Panel. Yes, Ian McPherson is the only sitting Chief Constable, but my guess is that this will not be a decisive factor in the decision-making. So the two Deputy Chief Constables will have to demonstrate how they can step up to Assistant Commissioner rank (equivalent in status to a Chief Constable with a budget larger than most Police forces), while the Chief Constable on the short-list will have to demonstrate his readiness to step back into a subordinate role (under a Commissioner and a Deputy Commissioner who has previously filled the equivalent Assistant Commissioner role).

So what is Sean O’Neill up to? Is he articulating what Sir Paul Stephenson (SPS as his staff call him) wants?

SPS is on record as saying that he doesn’t trust the Police Authority to make the right appointments would prefer to have sole responsibility for making appointments to his senior team (actually I am not sure that there is much evidence – if any – that the Metropolitan Police Authority has ever imposed on SPS anyone in his senior team he wouldn’t want). So was this a way of SPS signalling to the MPA who is his preferred candidate? I hope not. The Panel will – quite properly – make its decision on the performance of the three candidates in the selection process.

It is not for a newspaper – not even The Times – to try to prejudice the process.

And the proper way for SPS to get the candidate he wants (whoever that may turn out to be) is to evidence from what emerges in the selection process why his preferred candidate is the best qualified. And to present that evidence to the Panel as it makes its decision. And I am sure that’s the way it will happen.

I joined a visit by the House of Lords All-Party London Group to the 2012 Olympic Park site this morning.  The transformation of the site since I last went is impressive.  The shape and structure of the Olympic Stadium, the Acquatic Centre and the Velodrome are all clear, as is the outline of the Olympic Village and other facilities such as the International Media Centre.

It is easy to see why the International Olympic Committee are so pleased with the progress that London is making towards July 2012.  I remember visiting Athens four months before they hosted the 2004 Olympics.  With just sixteen weeks to go the Athens site felt just as much of a building site as Stratford does with thirty-three months to go.

Some of my colleagues slightly overwhelmed our guides with their detailed questions (“Where do the sewers go?”; “What limits are there on architects using their involvement in Olympic projects for their own marketing?” etc).  Nevertheless, all were impressed with the progress being made, the sheer scale of the project, and the efforts being made to make the project environmentally and economically sustainable (a large number of jobs and apprenticeships have gone to local people, transport is being improved so that virtually all visitors to the Games will go by public transport etc).

(Incidentally, the Olympic Delivery Authority organises free bus tours for anyone who wants to go – not just interested members of the House of Lords. To book a place phone 0300 2012 001.)

Progress has been so good that I understand that the Olympic Development Authority now intends to hand the Olympic Park over to LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) earlier than expected.  This may well be unprecedented.  It was certainly not budgeted for.  As a result, LOCOG will have to find tens of millions of pounds extra to cover the security and management costs for the Park for the extra months.

I have been predicting for some time that Sir Simon Milton, one of Mayor Boris Johnson’s remaining Deputy Mayors and now in the pivotal position of being the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, will be leaving City Hall next summer in the (unlikely, of course) event of a Cameron Government.  I have heard that he will be given a peerage and offered a (junior) ministerial role.

Now there is confirmation.  Admittedly, not from an official Conservative Party source – but I suspect they must have heard something.

John Horam has announced that he is retiring as MP for Orpington at the next General Election.

John Horam is said to be unique – the only person to have sat in the House of Commons representing three different political parties (Labour 1970-81; SDP 1981-83; Conservative 1992-date).  I had met him once when he was a Labour MP, but I had dealings with him when he was a junior (Conservative) health minister and also on policing matters as MP for Orpington – I always found him very courteous and conscientious.

His retirement, however, creates another vacancy amongst London Tory MPs and his seat will be being eyed hungrily by ambitious members of Mayor Boris Johnson’s team.  I have already commented that Mayor Boris Johnson may find himself running London on his own by next summer.

So who will be after the Orpington vacancy?  The seat falls within the Assembly Division represented by James Cleverly AM.  He is in the enviable position of having two Parliamentary vacancies opening up within his patch – the other is Beckenham where Jacqui Lait is retiring.  However, one of his colleagues, Gareth Bacon MP (who is also a Bexley Councillor) is said to be interested as well.