That was a close one. Miliband set two traps for the PM today. One was visible. The other, far more dangerous, was hidden until the very last moment. Miliband wants Tories to vote against a bill that will forbid serving MPs from acting as company directors. This connects sweetly with his ‘Thatcherite swine gobbling at the Westminster trough’ motif.
The Labour leader asked Cameron if he minded MPs having two jobs.
‘He has a chance to vote for change tonight.’
Cameron blithely objected that the new bill excludes directors of family businesses but not ‘paid trade union officials.’
Miliband pounced. Conceding Cameron’s point, he offered to make a ‘manuscript amendment’ to the bill and to add the words ‘paid trade union official’ to the list of prohibited occupations.
There it was. Cameron’s clause was in the bill. Miliband was ready to ink the words onto the page with his own quill.
Crikey. Quite a jam for Cam. He looked amazingly unruffled on the surface. His grey-pink chops and mobile eyes showed no trace of doubt or panic as he leaned nonchalantly at the despatch box and brushed aside the killer-conundrum. He raised ‘other problems’ with the bill and then ladled out a stale dollop of 1980s-era sauce about excessive union influence over Labour policy.
It was the nearest of near misses. But Cameron’s tormentor came to his assistance. Miliband is excessively cautious, especially when he’s in the ascendant, and he failed to pursue his advantage. He blew his final two questions on angry and repetitive challenges. The watching public had just seen Cameron exhibit a sensational lack of principle and of backbone. All Miliband had to do was to spend a moment retracing the details of this devious manoeuvre and to skewer his prey with some acidic mockery. Lasting damage might have been done. But the greased piglet escaped again!
Cameron must know he avoided a near-fatal capsize by the narrowest of margins.
The debate rumbled on and Cameron conceded that back-benchers are no more than over-paid part-timers. If the job required a full-time commitment no MP could serve as PM.
The key isn’t the number of hours passed inside Westminster or anywhere else. History offers countless examples of economic and social disasters created by idle MPs who mistook ‘Commons activity’ for ‘helping humanity.’ The less time these bothersome tax-locusts spend at work the greater the store of general contentment. So a backbencher should have as many jobs, and as wide an experience of normal life, as he can cram into his not-especially-busy day. If the voters dislike it they can Lembit Opik him.
It’s clear there are two categories of multi-tasking MP.
1. Trained professionals who bring their expertise to Westminster and who wish to maintain their skills at a serviceable level.
2. Needy show-offs who use parliament to promote themselves as authors, comics, sex-athletes, drinking champions, after-dinner speakers and stars of celebrity pratfall shows.
Westminster offers this second type of MP an invaluable free platform from which to cultivate his extra-curricular clowning around. How much cash he generates is irrelevant. What matters is how much he should cough up for the PR network that facilitates his side-projects. A West End agent would charge 12.5 per cent (plus VAT). Sounds about right. Problem solved.
Comments