“One of the most pathetic PMQs I’ve seen in a long time.” That was the judgement of Robert Peston at the behaviour of (predominantly Labour) MPs this week’s usual carry-on. He was referring to the queue of smirking Starmer supporters bobbing up and asking whatever pretend questions the whips had required of them.
This isn’t fun. It isn’t funny. It certainly isn’t clever. We have waited 14 long years for a return to some kind of dignity in politics, and we want some sign that Labour is taking government more seriously than their predecessors. So supinely asking set-up questions you’ve been given in order to climb the political ladder won’t cut it.
They did not fortunately include any MP from this region, though Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) was certainly at the near end of the ‘obsequious’ spectrum: surely it ought to be possible to ask questions of the leader without grovelling? He welcomed “fantastic news” in the Budget on education, which might mean he doesn’t believe it, though one suspects he meant it as hyberbole, another fashion our politics could do without.
Mr Peston is a stickler. He pointed out that just about every MP was also reading their questions, which is not supposed to be allowed. He observes in exasperation: “About the only qualification to be an MP these days is the ability to read your own handwriting”.
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Pecksniff scribbled a note on the blotter this week to look for more positive tales of our MPs. Chance would be a fine thing, eh? One doesn’t doubt that most of our new members are working hard, heads down, but with many still without offices or phones, carrier pigeon often still appears the best means of communication. So their efforts must go unrecorded, but your diarist positively seethes with goodwill so we shall give them the benefit of the doubt.
One of the week’s votes that your diarist would like explained is why, during the otherwise laudable House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, Labour refused to back an amendment which would also have applied the stricture to the 26 bishops who sit in the Lords representing the Church of England. According to The House magazine, most new Labour members privately agree with abolishing the bishops’ bench.
But that is privately. Please tell us that this amendment was not voted down just because it was proposed by a Tory, the whips wouldn’t have it and, sheep-like, all those ingenues duly did as they were told and trooped through the ‘no’ lobby.
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You may judge for yourself of the outcome of trade negotiations with a Trump government, in anticipation of the forthcoming tsunami of protectionism. Dear reader, will he be gentle with us? Offer us favourable terms? Fondly call in the ‘special relationship’? Will pigs once more form whole complex murmurations overhead?
The alternative is to cosy up to the EU, whose very existence has been built on welcoming in new partners and supporting them financially and politically, and in so doing has become the largest trading bloc in the world.
In general however, hysterics over the lunatic posturings of a lilliputian fantasist and narcissist on the other side of the world seem a rather pointless – not to say inelegant – position to take. We cannot influence them, yet we allow every hour of our lives to be linked somehow to the fate of the world.
We might do better to follow Voltaire’s advice and cultivate our own garden.
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The shifting (and occasionally shiftless) commentariat of the Muckrakers Arms are agreed: there is something odd about Wes Streeting. Odd, that is, apart from his astonishing resemblance to the facial features-free computer-generated TV presenter Max Headroom. In demeanour he gives the impression of a door-to-door salesman on the make. Since he was destined to become quite a big noise in the cabinet, did nobody think to send him on a course or something? ‘How to win friends and influence people’ would do.
His main communications tool seems to be to find somebody with whom he might otherwise have expected to share some safe common ground, and then think of at least three ideas most likely to outrage them. It has become his stock in trade approach. We can only assume that underneath that dislikeable bluster of an upfront and pushy politician in a hurry, there exists a much more uncertain and fearful politician in a hurry.
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Wes Streeting is also doing his bull in a china-shop routine over the assisted dying bill. Members of the government are explicitly requested not to promote one argument or the other, yet in declaring that the initiative would weigh heavily (if obscurely) on the NHS, for which he is responsible of course, he appears to be getting close to the line.
Our interest mainly however will be how our East Anglian MPs vote. So far, four have declared themselves in favour: Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds), who is incidentally an NHS consultant, Sarah Owen (Luton N), Sarah Hopkins (Luton S & S Beds) and Terry Jermy (SW Norfolk). One so far will vote against: Andrew Pakes (Peterborough).
For some time East Anglia Bylines has been musing on which of our MPs are most likely to make their mark in Parliament, and by chance these five would probably all make the list.
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Last week’s diary did not include any mention of the Dispatches revelations about the monarchy’s avarice, though not out of any squeamishness about expressing contempt over their behaviour. There was the predictable hermetic silence from the media, except for one or two expected exceptions, but then your diarist spotted a new programme on ITV, ‘The Royal Beat’, which promised to bring all the up-to-date news about the royal family. (Correction: they probably called it ‘our royal family.’)
Dear reader, your diarist was agog, crouched eagerly over the set: would there be more beans to spill…? Well, no. It seems the hot royal question this week was concerned with what the new President Trump would do about Harry’s visa status.
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But since we are now on the subject, the king is probably a good subject for this diary. His absence has been an oversight, which the unwearying researches of your correspondent is ready to correct. The king’s apparent comfort in screwing every last penny out of his loyal people may be considered to be reflected in a letter which Charles himself wrote to an industrial tribunal, at which he was being sued by one of his former employees. (Don’t ask.)
We are grateful here to Graham Smith, CEO of the campaigning organisation Republic, and his book ‘Abolishing the Monarchy’.
“What is wrong with people these days?” demanded Charles. “Why do they all think they are qualified to do things far above their capabilities? This is all to do with the learning culture in schools… which tells people they can become pop stars, high court judges or brilliant TV presenters or, infinitely more competent, heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having the natural ability.”
That learning culture, eh? Giving people ideas above their station. The king’s natural abilities on the other hand are five ‘O’ levels and two ‘A’ levels at Gordonstoun, which results were naturally sufficient to have him propelled swiftly to Cambridge University, where he gained a 2:2. For anybody else, that school performance would probably have got him into Middlesex Polytechnic, and a 2:2 there might have set him up nicely among the lowly foothills of a managerial career at Barclays.
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Nick Timothy (W Suffolk) is another who disparages what we are doing to our children. Charles is outraged that education is shamelessly promoting ambition – is it the distant rumble of the tumbrils that discomforts him? – but it’s worse than that. As Mr Timothy points out, there are even plans to make school days enjoyable!
Mr Timothy is a pettifogger. He makes his career out of gauging the tone of indignation best suited to the crustiest and most senescent and anti-macassared Telegraph readers, some of whom in Newmarket joyously chose him to represent them as their Conservative candidate. You will not need this correspondent, dear reader, to point out that these were the same group who plumped for Matt Hancock before him.
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For all his bravura, it is always difficult to take Nigel Farage (Clacton) seriously. There is the whiff of pantomime about him, and he really doesn’t bring off hauteur at all well. In the words of Anthony Powell about one of his characters: “He wears a slightly guilt look, as one evasively vacating the bathroom”.
His latest beef is that, as the leader of a political party, he was not invited to this year’s cenotaph commemorations. Only he made the same complaint in 2015, when leader of the UK Independence Party, so he was already aware of the rules. He was told then:
“The laying of wreaths by Parliamentary leaders is governed by a formula put in place in 1984 with the agreement of The Queen and the Speaker of the House of Commons, following discussion with party leaders based on the number of Westminster parliamentary seats.
“This stipulates that only the leaders at Westminster of parties which had won and taken up six or more seats at the preceding general election should lay wreaths.”
From which we are loathe to believe that his only reason for so publicly and belligerently posing a question, to which he already knows the answer, is to make shabby party politics out of the dead he pretends to honour.
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“We spend the third most in Europe, and we have the second worst outcomes,” says Reform MP Rupert Lowe (Gt Yarmouth) of the NHS. Mr Lowe is then shown a graph, which demonstrates he is talking out of his despatch box. His claims seem not to fit anywhere. They are a delusion. In response, Mr Lowe demands, outraged: “Is this a BBC graph?”
The Bible’s book of Daniel declares: “Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” Like the laws of those wacky funsters the Medes and the Persians, once our Mr Lowe has dreamt up a conclusion, fact-free out of the miasma of his mind, it altereth not.
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