Oh dear. While all eyes in Westminster were on the dispatch boxes at Prime Minister’s Questions today, it appears an unsightly scuffle was going on just out of sight. Joanna Cherry, the onetime SNP darling sacked from her party’s front bench in February, has accused the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey of ‘unacceptable behaviour.’
In a series of tweets shortly after the session ended, Cherry claimed that Davey, buoyant after last Thursday’s by-election triumph in Chesham and Amersham, had tried to dislodge her from her perch on the Commons green benches. She wrote on Twitter that: ‘There are no reserved seats in @HouseofCommons at present yet Ed Davey just made me give up my seat for him at #PMQs in a v forceful manner.
‘I’ve had a gut-full of unacceptable behaviour from other parliamentarians recently & I’m taking it up with the Speaker. Presumably Ed Davey got the memo that on account of my gender critical views I’m fair game for nasty behaviour & no one, including my own party, will defend me. It’s intolerable.’
The reference to Cherry’s treatment at the hands of her own party will not go down well in Holyrood, where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is said to view the ambitious lawyer as a threat to her position. Davey meanwhile is yet to respond to the allegation that he turfed a lady out of her seat, behaviour that hardly seems becoming of a knight of the realm.
Then again, given the Lib Dems began campaigning in Chesham while the incumbent MP Cheryl Gillan was on her death bed, perhaps it’s not a surprise to see them trying to dislodge a sitting member while they’re still in the Commons.
Comments