The Spectator's Notes

20 June 2009

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

Should the next Speaker speak? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. It seems obvious that, in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, the ‘first Commoner in the land’ should add his voice to the public conversation. Until now, he has been forbidden by convention from doing so. The favourite for the post, John Bercow, wants to get out there on the media, being, he says annoyingly, ‘a Speaker and a Listener’. But if Mr Speaker Bercow (or whoever) gets lots of invitations to appear on GMTV, he will have to say something, and if he says something, he will be expected to say something interesting, and if he says something interesting, it will be hard to avoid stirring controversy among the MPs towards whom he must be impartial. The oft-repeated doctrine of Mr Speaker Lenthall confronted by the King is that he ‘hath not tongue to utter’ unless the House give him leave. Surely the Speaker should be much more vigorous about his historic role which gives him his title of speaking for the House to the executive. Surely, too, he should have more public discussion with the House about how it runs itself. But if his tongue is uttering all over the airwaves, there will be trouble. Candidates who are less ready to climb on the hustings, such as Frank Field, seem more suitable.

On 18 January 1944, the 69-year-old Winston Churchill travelled overnight by train to London from the coast. He had just returned from two months abroad, during which time he had attended the Tehran Conference and then, in North Africa, contracted pneumonia. Two hours after arriving at Paddington, he was in the House of Commons, without warning. Harold Nicolson recorded the scene: ‘I was idly glancing at my Order Paper when I saw (saw is the word) a gasp of astonishment pass over the faces of the Labour Party opposite. Suddenly they jumped to their feet and started shouting, waving their order papers in the air. We also jumped up and the whole House broke into cheer after cheer while Winston, very pink, rather shy, beaming with mischief, crept along the front bench and flung himself into his accustomed seat. He was flushed with pleasure and emotion, and hardly had he sat down when two large tears began to trickle down his cheeks.’ Then Churchill took Prime Minister’s Questions: ‘Most men would have been unable, on such an occasion, not to throw a flash of drama into their replies. But Winston answered them as if he were the youngest Under-Secretary, putting on his glasses, turning over his papers, responding tactfully to supplementaries, and taking the whole thing as conscientiously as could be.’ The biggest single improvement in the morale of the House of Commons today would be a Prime Minister who took it seriously. He should be there. He should vote in most of its divisions and talk to Members in the lobby and respect its procedures. He should instinctively wish to tell it things before speaking elsewhere. A significant gesture in the right direction would be for David Cameron, if he makes it to Number 10, to restore twice-weekly Prime Minister’s Questions, but I notice that he is avoiding any such commitment. His advisers worry that it would take up time. So it would, but it would be time well spent, because it would acquaint the Prime Minister with every issue in government and keep him in touch with the people the people have elected. Churchill, after all, was fairly busy, but never too busy for the House of Commons. The Gordon Brown solution, by contrast, is to swell the Cabinet and its entourage to such a size that no single table can any longer be found, and stay well away from Parliament.

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