The Palace of Westminster, already beset by crumbling finials, has developed a damp problem. Nothing to do with bricks and mortar. We are talking about moral wetness. Has the elected House ever contained a soggier crew? Hand-wringers abound. They demand ‘apostrophe laws’ named after victims of misfortune and then announce that ‘Mavis’s mum’ – or whoever that week’s unfortunate might be – ‘is with us today’. Everyone scans the galleries to coo. And sometimes even clap.
The campaigns they espouse may, per se, be virtuous. What sticks in the gullet is the expropriation of goodness, the pushing of parliamentary debate away from flinty reality toward an emotive gloop better suited to breakfast television. Who are these hankie-clutching Herberts?
Rachel Reeves: the Chancellor who blubbed at PMQs. Do civil servants include a supply of man-size scotties in her ministerial red box?
Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the Commons: proudly announced he had been made ‘an honorary kindness ambassador’. Sir Alan was upset by Kemi Badenoch’s Budget day harpooning of Rachel Reeves. Kindness ambassador Sir Alan wailed that it ‘hit the wrong tone’.
Barry Gardiner (Lab, Brent West): when the Chagos Islands surrender was announced, Sinophile Barry was unfazed about the cost and strategic perils. He clutched his too-neat beard and fretted about the area’s damselfish.
Josh Babarinde (Lib Dem, Eastbourne): wet as a spaniel’s backside. Favours tight-fitting lurid suits, one the colour of pea soup. Unremittingly parochial. Has told the House about where he was born, where he learned to swim, his boyhood rides on the No. 12 bus route and much else. A reincarnation of Private Godfrey.
Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives): Cornish gulper whose gluey questions are dotted by pauses for swallowing. Keen on giving the Elgin Marbles back to Greece because beastly Lord Elgin was ‘dishonourable’ in rescuing the Parthenon statues from likely obliteration.
Alberto Costa (Con, South Leics): Standards Committee chairman forever ‘thanking people for their work’ and their ‘valued contributions’. A cross between Mr Pooter and Uriah Heep.
Peter Swallow (Lab, Bracknell): used a Keir Starmer statement on foreign affairs to disclose that ten-year-olds had sent him a letter expressing their ‘deep concern about the ongoing crisis in Sudan’. Sir Keir, instead of telling the little ones’ teachers to stop manipulating their young charges, mewed that the aptly named Swallow should ‘thank them for raising this’. It was ‘important’ that they had done so.
Luke Charters: don’t get him started on male depression or you’ll want to jump in the Thames
Joe Morris (Lab, Hexham): slovenly shriveller, hand normally in pocket, rubs his chin when talking, ergo barely audible. The Hexham Mumbler.
Wendy Morton (Con, Aldridge-Brownhills): former chief whip who intervened at education questions to beg congratulations for primary school pupils in her constituency for qualifying for a London chess tournament. No Spassky, she.
Chris Vince (Lab, Harlow): sometime maths teacher who could be Norman Wisdom’s Norman Pitkin, giggling and rubbing his face, clapping his forehead at his goofs and frequently mentioning that his mum worked for the Inland Revenue. Ministers grind their jaws and pretend to be amused, while quietly wishing they had a custard pie to push in his face.
Liz Kendall (Lab, Leicester West): loves to tell backbenchers of her ‘respect’ and ‘concern’. Said in the Commons that ‘patience may not be my middle name’ but limitless tolerance is exactly what damp Liz exudes. As pensions secretary she should have met welfare-cuts rebellion with hard arguments about benefits being too generous. Instead her government went glugging down the welfarism plughole.
Kim Leadbeater (Lab, Spen Valley): titular sponsor of the assisted dying bill (its real brain is cold-livered Charlie Falconer). Keep-fit Kim is all bounce and sympathy, ‘ever so anxious’ to impart amiability, wincing with professed sympathy as opponents say what they hate about her bill. Treats the whole grisly thing like a PE class challenge.
Neil Hudson (Con, Epping Forest): when Epping exploded against migrant hotels the local MP was this timid veterinary surgeon who did the chicken run from Penrith and the Border. He handled a vivid issue with all the verve of a vet telling a cat-owner that Tiddles needed a course of suppositories.
Luke Charters (Lab, York Outer): don’t get him started on male depression or you’ll be there hours, and possibly want to jump in the Thames. At transport questions he complained that the No. 11 bus to his town’s crematorium did not run on a Sunday, so a constituent was unable ‘to visit loved ones on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. That put a real lump in my throat’. Could the constituent not have booked an Uber?
James MacCleary (Lib Dem, Lewes): wants female footballers to be paid the same as Arsenal and Man City’s male stars. Quite possibly insane.
Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem, Maidenhead): successor to deeper-voiced Theresa May. Used his maiden speech to explain that ‘the Palace of Westminster is slightly larger than Maidenhead town hall, where I was a cabinet minister for communities and leisure’. Would not be out of place behind the smalls counter at Grace Brothers department store.
Sir Ed Davey (Lib Dem, Kingston and Surbiton): wannabe deputy PM whose contribution to geopolitics this year was to bite his lower lip and snub the state banquet for Donald Trump. Quite how Windsor Castle is still standing after this blow, one can not say.
Helen Morgan (Lib Dem, North Shropshire): an MP for four years but still petrified of her own shadow. Colleagues should keep a bong pipe nearby to soothe her nerves before she speaks.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Lab, Aylesbury): gusher. Posh Laura is forever ‘really proud’ or telling us things are ‘really great’. Keen on ‘engaging young people in politics’. Oh, please. Let them get drunk, bonk, sleep till noon, shoot beer cans with air rifles and gnaw on marrow bones. There’s plenty of time for the misery of politics later in life.
Bridget Phillipson (Lab, Houghton and Sunderland South): yes, Scary Bridget, our sour Education Secretary, is not above drippiness. When discussing her breakfast clubs her mouth bends into an unfamiliar smile – alarming – and she goes as soggy as old Sugar Smacks. She said nine-year-olds would ‘be invited to become bistro leaders’. School canteens are now bistros!
Compared with these bedwetters, Basil Fotherington-Tomas would have walked into the Parachute Regiment.
Comments