It is astounding how many politicians and public figures cannot do it no matter

(It is astounding how many politicians and public figures cannot do it, no matter how many training sessions the spin doctors put them through: Kenneth Clarke and William Waldegrave are among those incapable of speaking compactly.)Some might say this is a paltry talent. Why should they reduce complexity to a pithy phrase or two? But it has become an inexorable law of modern communications, defied at peril, and Liz Symons has a command of that unpalatable fact, sourly envied by some of her fellow trade unionists. She will exchange a salary of nearly pounds 60,000 for expenses of pounds 33 a day for 140 days of the year - a meagre pounds 4,620 a year, plus a bit of a housing allowance. Baroness Hollis says she sometimes makes as many as 30 speeches in a week, so it will not be a particularly cushy job and few people will bother to report anything much of what she says in the Lords.That may come as a disappointment to a woman who has enjoyed the limelight as a phenomenally able television performer. While her pleasing appearance and snazzy dressing helps, the quality that television news and documentary producers most keenly seek out is the ability to make a worthwhile point in a sharp, 20-second sound-bite - and do it in one take.

It will be a hard-working life, and will probably leave her out of pocket. She will join the array of formidable front- bench baronesses who carry much of Labour's business in the upper house, such as Ladies Hollis, Jay, Blackstone, Gould and Turner. Why, even Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary himself, belongs to it.Liz Symons will leave the FDA to take up her seat in the Lords as a full- time working Labour peer. Why not some other more deserving, keen Blair loyalists - what of Garfield Davies of Usdaw, for instance? Or Alan Johnson, the beleaguered leader of the Communication Workers' Union? (Though elevating him in the middle of the turmoil of the postal strike might not be politic.) The suspicion is that Mr Blair wanted a "safe" trade unionist, not a real trade unionist at all For the FDA is a curious hybrid.

"But her face fits, doesn't it? A Barbara Follett, a New Labour clone lady. Nice voice, nice clothes, nice education, nice trade union, and now a nice fat handle." The bitterness is understandable among trade unionists whose noses have been so put out of joint of late. Liz Symons? A Labour peerage? Typical Blair! If Tony Blair wanted to elevate a trade union leader to the Lords, why did he pick the leader of a union that is scarcely a union at all, the First Division Association for top civil servants? What has Ms Symons ever done for The Movement? Where are her real roots in trade unionism or the Labour Party? "She's not exactly working class," said one unionist caustically. WHEN the news broke on Wednesday morning, the phones in various trade union offices began to grumble and mutter. And a certain amount of inflation helps win an election; or so the Conservatives clearly hope.I am now off to investigate the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy in the valleys of the the Rhone and the Saone, and shall be back, God willing, for the Liberal Democrat conference, God help us.. I have never been able to see why an inflation in house prices should be regarded as virtuous and an inflation in other prices as vicious. In fact they exist together: it is just that the inflation in house prices is more noticeable and more welcome.

Nor have I ever been able to understand how one type of inflation can exist without the presence of the other as well. His (to many) irritating smile has had more to do with it than his threat to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers.What has had most to do with it has been the change in the way people seem to regard their financial prospects. But the shift which I mentioned at the beginning has not, I think, come about because of Mr Blair's constitutional proposals. But this is not on offer.In the present state of opinion, the temptation for Mr Blair will be to dilute or modify what he is offering, over both the House of Lords and other constitutional matters He has already done it with Scottish devolution. In any case, it is as objectionable a method of forming a legislative chamber as heredity. For myself, I have long believed in a wholly elected second chamber with drastically increased powers. This is in the context of suggesting that some form of election to the Lords should be introduced additionally.

But merit is now judged exclusively by the political parties. For instance, the Labour peer Lord Williams of Elvel was exalted because he was a chum of Mr Roy Hattersley. Sometimes political patronage produces beneficent consequences, as it has with the Labour Lady Hollis; at other times, not. They are given also to party apparatchiks such as the former Labour general secretary Mr Larry Whitty, who was nominated by Mr Blair as a kind of consolation prize. Of all the Prime Ministers since the institution of life peerages in 1958, Wilson was the most prodigal.In his John Smith lecture on constitutional reform, which is permanently by my side in my study, Mr Blair talks of "merit" as the criterion for choosing life peers. They are given, among other categories, to former cabinet ministers, who seem to have established a new constitutional convention that they are automatically entitled to one. It has never itself put out anything quite so offensive, at any rate intentionally - though I very much doubt whether it will cause even the most sensitive six-year-old to lose any sleep.Where the party is being a humbug is over the ennoblement as life peers of the poster's begetters, Mr Maurice Saatchi and Mr Peter Gummer (who is, as it happens, a Labour supporter, or so he once told me) Such peerages have always been dished out on a party basis.