Is there movement?
Finally, there seems to be a bit of movement in the slow-motion constitutional crisis. It looks as if there may be an attempt to lay some kind of timetabling motion to prevent further spinning out of debate on Monday.
The motion - which would have to be presented as a one-off fix for pretty unique circumstances - would then be debated on Tuesday. But whether the Upper House would swallow a profound change in its normal mode of business is still a difficult question.
One way of reassuring peers that they were not heading for a brutalist Commons-style guillotine procedure, where debate was simply cut off and large chunks of bills might be left unexamined, would be for the timetable to be devised and proposed by a neutral source. I blogged below about the possibility that the Lord Speaker could take on that role; another possible source would be the crossbenchers.
Either way, I think peers would still need a lot of persuasion and reassurance.
Behind the scenes, the Lords has been seething with plot, counter-plot and general angst as the deadlock rolls ever onward. But after 14 days of committee stage "debate" on the , with three more days set down for next week (and three further days being kept clear for the week after) a feeling that "something must be done" is crystallising. David Cameron and Ed Miliband have both met crossbench peers to try to enlist their support - and I'm told the PM was given a rough ride when he suggested timetabling further debate on the bill was now necessary.
Senior figures like the Convener of the Crossbench Peers, Lady D'Souza, are now worried that the Upper House itself could suffer lasting damage, if there is a heavy-handed intervention to change its normal ways of working - she talks of the Lords "unravelling". The mood of bitterness and mistrust is quite unlike their lordships normal collegiality. And even if the current crisis is solved next Tuesday, it will take quite a while for the scars to heal.
And the surgery necessary, if it takes the form of a timetabling procedure, could leave the patient rather disfigured.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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