Last week Britain was a free-market democracy. Now we’re living in a one-party state. The transition became clear at PMQs today where General-Secretary Johnson gave bland and reassuring replies to super-soft questions from tame MPs.
The House was half empty. Members practised a sort of semi-self-isolation. They sat apart from each other by a distance of about four feet, or the width of Cyril Smith.
The mood – one of hunched defiance – doesn’t suit the Commons which prefers a rowdy, combative carnival atmosphere. All political differences seem to have been cancelled. Previous sins are forgiven. Past idiocies forgotten.
Jeremy Corbyn went into a U-turn on small businesses. For years he has threatened to bankrupt sole-traders by banning zero-hours contracts. Today he called for special protection for the self-employed. And he wants sick-pay increased, more help for carers, and cash support for private tenants.
‘He’s making a series of very powerful points,’ nodded Boris meekly. He made it clear that the Treasury would throw everything at the superbug.
Corbyn hopes that Covid-19 will permanently establish in people’s minds the virtues of a centralised far-left dictatorship
A minor disagreement over testing blew up.
‘Test, test, test,’ urged Corbyn. Boris said that 10,000 tests a day were being done. Later he remembered, ‘we’re moving up to 25,000 tests a day.’
Corbyn delivered a statesmanlike flourish on his final question. It was intended for the history books. It won’t make the evening paper.
‘Generations to come will look back on this moment and judge us,’ he said. ‘The market cannot deliver what is needed. Only collective public action can protect us.’
Evidently he sees this as an Attlee-esque opportunity. Britain’s unity during the war prepared us for top-down socialism in peacetime. Corbyn hopes that Covid-19 will permanently establish in people’s minds the virtues of a centralised far-left dictatorship.
Boris might easily have dispelled that idea. He failed to do so. He seems to have become the creature of shadowy administrative commissars in this crisis. Worst of all his trump card, humour, has been nullified.
Many MPs were preoccupied with one issue. Would the PM announce the discovery of a test that can be done in less time than it takes Ian Blackford to ask a question?
Blackford referred to the Chancellor’s £330 billion support package yesterday which, not unsurprisingly, he considers ungenerous. He won’t be satisfied until the government brings in a universal minimum income, (which is just a pension-for-life available to everyone over 18). This tempting folly already exists in the benefits system and under normal circumstances Boris would dismiss it with a snort of contempt. He didn’t, and Blackford nabbed his chance. He asked the PM to attend a meeting where the idea might be discussed.
‘Yes indeed I can make that commitment,’ said Boris.
Chris Bryant, doing his celebrated impersonation of a rich widow at her husband’s funeral, seemed to grow tearful as he described the sick and elderly in his constituency. He begged the PM to see coronavirus ‘through the eyes of the Rhondda’.
‘I don’t want to be partisan but it does feel as if we’re a bit of an afterthought.’
‘He speaks passionately and powerfully for the Rhondda,’ was the PM’s stock reply. Bryant had said nothing with either passion or power.
This enfeebled parliamentary ritual dragged towards its conclusion. How would it end? Perhaps MPs would stand to attention and sing ‘Jerusalem’ while a school girl in pig-tails trotted up to Boris with a spray of carnations.
Or maybe next week.
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