King’s Speech

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB) (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Case, is of course a special moment for an old teacher like me. I thank him and other noble Lords, including the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, for their very moving words.

There is another factor in play. Old PhD supervisors never die; they fade away in libraries and archives, waiting and hoping that their former students do well, and, when they do, the pride is very real. There is another one of my former PhD students to come in this debate; I leave that to be a pleasant surprise for you all. These old teachers keep their metaphorical red pen poised and mark in their minds what their former pupils say and write. The noble Lord, Lord Case, will say wise and important things aplenty in this Chamber and its committees, and I shall be waiting, watching and applauding. It was a great day when my friend Dr Peter Martland got on the phone from Cambridge and told me he had just the research student for me. I urged the future Lord Case to get down the Mile End Road to Queen Mary straight away. He did. He came, he saw and he flourished, just as he will in your Lordships’ House.

Before I get to the subject of the constitution, I want to mention the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I was not planning a valedictory. “Plan it,” she said, so I did. The noble Baroness was one of our bridesmaids, and you do not argue with bridesmaids. I said, “I will do it if you come and sit beside me, lest it all becomes too much”. So, here we are.

I offer a few parting thoughts about the British constitution. To put it as pithily as I can, I am more anxious about it than I have ever been. Our constitution has been seriously stress-tested in the years since I joined your Lordships’ House in 2010. Since then, there have been some scarring moments—for example, when the highest in the political land ignored or disdained it when the constitutional decencies and proprieties etched into the Ministerial Code got in his way.

It may well be the case that the current course and condition of British politics decays still further into rancour and recrimination, so I leave behind just one suggestion: that this House and its Constitution Committee carry out an inquiry into where the vulnerabilities of the British constitution might lie if, heaven forbid, a future Government sought to overthrow the conventions that have served us so well in the past. This is not the moment to recite a litany of the peculiar bundle of statutes, codes, practices, customs and precedents that together comprise this elusive phenomenon that, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, observed, is not contained in a single document yet somehow lives and breathes every day for the benefit and stability of our country. Instead, I shall concentrate on the human side: the states of mind, the sense of where the boundaries both visible and invisible are drawn, on the part of all those engaged in public and political life, for in the observance of these decencies our safety lies.

The human side of the British constitution in the past has relied on three feeder streams for it to bring it sustenance and refreshment, generation upon generation: the civility stream, the way we conduct our political arguments; the tolerance stream, the attitude we take to the losing side in said arguments; and the duty of care stream, which carries our sense of where the boundaries lie into the everyday conduct of political and public life. It is the confluence of these sustaining streams on which the buoyancy of our entire system of government depends. Happy is the country, fortunate are its people, when the steady flow of this life-enhancing cataract is the norm.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, noted, it was a Cabinet Office friend, the late Clive Priestley, who first called this human approach

“the good chaps theory of government”.

We would not, perhaps, use that precise vocabulary today, but Clive Priestley was right. In the end, the vitality and strength of the British constitution do depend on the sense of duty, public service and restraint of those set in authority above us.

We have been mired for too long in the politics of pessimism as a result of living in what many people regard as a “nothing works” society. Should this sour still further into a politics of despair, we would be in deep trouble. Crucial to avoiding this will be a replenishment of those feeder streams. This is why, in the end, I am optimistic, for those decencies run deep in our certain idea of Britain—to adapt the opening sentence of General Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs. I think especially of the brave, stoical generation who fought for us in the huge war of national survival in the 1940s, who planned and implemented a better peace for the generation into which I was born. They showed just how potent the mobilisation of decency can be. We owe it to their memory, and to the generations to come, to once more in our time mobilise that cardinal virtue.

For it is the politics of decency that is our greatest protection against a slide into the politics of despair, out of whose dark crevices authoritarianism can slink. To so mobilise would require no new statute from Parliament and not a penny from the Treasury, for it is a matter of spirit, a question of faith. We have done it before, and we can do it again. That is why, in the end, I am sure we can break out of the cycle of pessimism and hold the line against those who would curb our liberties and make a bonfire of the decencies in whose defence we must take our stand—and quickly. As my special friend, the noble Lord, Lord Case, expressed it just now, in a sentence that deserves to ring out from this Chamber: “The flexibility we celebrate can so easily become the catastrophe we regret”.

It has been a delight to sit with your Lordships these past 15 and a half years. I shall miss you all and for ever cherish the memory of our time together.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!