I’m not totally sure where they keep Ed Miliband in between his Commons appearances. Perhaps some sort of deep freeze for the terminally media-unsavvy, in between Lammy and Lucy Powell. True, he is allowed to do the odd cringe-inducing publicity video, like the time he filmed his atonal strumming of a ukulele in front of a wind turbine. Presumably Sir Keir releases him from the grip of his iron trotters for these occasional acts of self-humiliation pour encourager les autres.
Yet here he was today in parliament – an increasingly rare example of a cabinet minister actually coming to the Commons to announce a major policy. What’s more, this was something even rarer – some good news from the government: nuclear power is back on again after 30 years of woeful inaction from all the main parties. Milibean was in a celebratory mood. Spittle flecked the despatch box as his enthusiasm got the better of him.
There was push-back from Nick Timothy – again a rare bird in being a shadow minister who is both confident and competent. Mr Timothy welcomed the move but asked, given it was such a good idea, why it was still being combined with the Milibean’s fanatical obsession with promoting less efficient forms of energy and completely shutting down oil and gas.
‘It’s kinda hard on a day like this to be a member of the opposition,’ trumpeted Miliband. As if being a member of this government is some sort of 24/7 run of triumphs, rather than a slow-motion version of Downfall performed by the cast of the later, less funny Carry On films. Answer to Mr Timothy came there none, just more bleating and boasting from Doncaster North’s walking bastion of smarm.
Kirsty Blackman of the SNP railed against ‘English power stations’, in the tone of voice one might use to describe ‘Spanish flu’ or ‘the French disease’. Mr Miliband leant over the despatch box and lobbed a few glottal stops in her direction. ‘On nuclear power, they’ve really gotta think again’.
The Energy Secretary really is the most astonishing Commons performer. I don’t mean this in terms of the brilliance of his oratory but because of the incredible range of tics and oddnesses to which he treats the chamber. When confronted by a question which he doesn’t care for, the Milibean launches into a range of contortions. He screws up his face, gnaws on his thumb or pen and makes random noises to himself. It is perhaps the only case of St. Vitus Dance being brought on by parliamentary questioning. Sometimes he manages to contort himself so much that he looks like one of those amorphous organisms that sit, jelly-like, on the ocean floor, before snapping themselves into action at the hint of some plankton. Really, he should be described by David Attenborough, not me.
You can just imagine Ed Davey trying to abseil down a reactor at Sellafield
High, appropriately, on his own supply, the Energy Secretary continued to demean and dismiss. He accused the Lib Dem spokeswoman of engaging in ‘Trotskyist behaviour’ – which must be the first ever case of the pot calling the kettle red. Specifically, he pointed out that for all their Damascene welcoming of nuclear now, their opposition had hamstrung coalition attempts to move forward on this, courtesy of the then-energy secretary, Sir Ed Davey. Presumably Davey’s opposition comes from the fact that lame publicity stunts are frowned upon at high-risk nuclear sites. You can just imagine him trying to abseil down a reactor at Sellafield and inadvertently causing a Cumbrian Chernobyl.
It was the Speaker’s birthday and one backbencher attempted some themed toadying by pointing out that the first UK reactor had opened on the day of his birth. ‘And it’s been decommissioned’, observed Sir Lindsay. I will leave readers to make up their own minds about whether the Speaker ought to follow suit.
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