THERESA MAY threw away Tory domination by losing seats in the general election. So last month she tried to build it up again by using the undemocratic bit of government — May created nine new Tory lords, plus one DUP lord. 

In the general election, the Tories got 13.6 million votes, Labour got 12.8m votes, and the DUP got 292,000 votes. But Labour got just three new lords out of the process.

So was this an undemocratic attempt to shore up the Tories by giving jobs to unimpressive cronies? Of course it was. After all, one of the new Lords is Eric Pickles. He couldn’t make it as a minister, so he becomes a lord. 

Pickles isn’t the only Tory crony with an unimpressive past in this batch. Catherine Meyer was also given a seat in the Lords.
Meyer was national treasurer of the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2015, so this is a totally Tory appointment.

She is best known as the wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003. 
Sir Christopher was the British ambassador to Washington when Tony Blair got Britain to join the US in the ill-fated Iraq war. 

According to Meyer, when he went to the US in 1997, Blair’s chief of staff told him the mission was: “We want you to get up the arse of the White House and stay there.” 

He did indeed willingly get up the arse of president George Bush, and willingly passed on all the crappy lies and rubbish that got us into that war.

However, we should judge Catherine Meyer in her own right, not on her husband’s past life crammed up the arse of George “Dubya” Bush.

Catherine Meyer was made a life peer with a seat in the House of Lords because, according to the citation, she is “founder and lately chief executive of Action Against Abduction.”  

This is a charity formerly known as Parents and Abducted Children Together, which Meyer founded in 1999. 

This charity worked to publicise and campaign against parental abduction — where a father, for example, takes their son away from their mother to a different country.  

This is a very personal issue for Meyer: she has two sons who, post-divorce, were taken from her custody by their father. Meyer had to run a decade-long legal case to get access to her own sons.

However, while there is every reason to believe Catherine Meyer is committed to the cause, there is less reason to believe this was an effective charity. 

Catherine Meyer certainly has the contacts. Nick Timothy, formerly Prime Minister Theresa May’s special adviser and general Svengali figure, is a trustee of the charity. 

Cherie Blair was also a patron of the charity until 2012. Cherie Blair stepped down from her role with Catherine Meyer’s charity after the Telegraph revealed that most of the charity’s cash was spent on Meyer’s own salary.

Looking at the latest accounts of the charity, it does not seem like an effective organisation: the accounts, given to the Charity Commission at the end of last year, cover 2016. 

They show the charity had an income of £54,789, but spent £98,172. This is a very small charity, which is spending more than the relatively modest sums it raises. 

The charity has spent more than it raises for four out of the past five years. The largest single expenditure is Catherine Meyer’s own salary, which at £58,980 is 60 per cent of the charity spending.

Not only that, the spending on Catherine Meyer’s salary was going up. It was £44,359 in 2014 and £50,941 in 2015.

Essentially the charity was a one-woman band, which chiefly supported Catherine Meyer’s campaign on parental child abduction.  

However, the latest accounts also say that Catherine Meyer is “retiring” and it seems the band is being wound up.

Under “future plans” the latest report says that “the charity has experienced difficulties in raising funds. “Consequently, the trustees have reluctantly taken the decision to wind up the charitable operations.”

There are other much bigger charities working in child protection that are not being “wound up.” I  am sure that these charities have exceptional staff who would be happy to serve in the House of Lords. 

I can’t shake the suspicion that Catherine Meyer’s excellent Conservative and Establishment friendships are the main reason she has become a member of the Lords.

Solomon Hughes writes every Friday for the Morning Star. Follow him on Twitter @SolHughesWriter.