Chooom! Davies has arrived. Sir Howard’s report made a text-book landing on the PM’s desk yesterday afternoon and began taxiing towards Cameron’s in-tray. But the PM hasn’t read it yet. Or so he claimed at PMQs. He therefore avoided any commitment to building a third runway at Heathrow. And his excuse? Wilful ignorance.
Seriously? He hasn’t read it? Given the time and cash the damn thing has gobbled up he might have glanced at the executive summary. Sir Howard has worked his way through twenty million smackers reaching a foregone conclusion. His defenders point out that this money was very well spent because Sir Howard pays scrupulous personal attention to every detail of an important commission. On the day before the report appeared, (Monday, that is), Sir Howard’s chauffeured Bentley drew up a few yards from Heathrow’s perimeter fence and the great man lowered his electric window with an abacus at the ready. ‘That looks like a runway,’ he told an assistant. ‘That looks like another runway. One and one makes, let’s see, two isn’t it? Now then. How to increase capacity? Oh I know.’
Sir Howard has landed a new job examining options for Lib Dem expansion. The report, which will require him to count to eight, isn’t expected until 2025.
The Scottish Nationalists enjoyed their biggest victory of the parliament so far. It was all upside down, of course, because the Nats count defeat as triumph. The footling details involve selection procedures that will ensure that committees studying bills applicable to England alone are composed solely of English MPs. In other words Cameron has created an English parliament within Westminster to offset Holyrood in Scotland. Sounds reasonable. And it is. Even to the Nats. But their topsy-turvy logic means that while they were chuffed to bits, in secret, they went purple with fury in public.
Nat after Nat rose to curse this new arrangement as a betrayal, a curtailment of liberty, an amputation of democratic principles. You could see them road-testing their sound-bites for consumption by tartan-draped crowds back home. ‘Reduced rights of Scots MPs,’ moped Angela Crawley. ‘Second class status through the back door,’ quailed Neil Gray. The top Nat, Angus Robertson, parped that Cameron was turning his party’s role into ‘a minority pursuit’. Chris Law grumbled that elected MPs deserved better treatment. Law is the Nat-pack’s in-house show-off and he dresses in ostentatious tweeds presumably to stimulate comment. Ginger ponytail. Russet three-piece suit. He’s probably going for ‘antiquarian book-seller’ but he somehow looks more like a pretentious window-cleaner giving a best man’s speech. He was the fourth Nat to take the PM to task on the new committee selections. ‘He still hasn’t answered the question,’ he hollered.
‘Take yer hand out yer pocket,’ snarled a few Tories spotting that Law was fondling his thigh from inside his trousers while addressing the prime minister.
Cameron actually had answered Law’s question. And the answer was ‘sod off, I’m doing it anyway.’
Good for those who want an English parliament. Even better for the Nats who crave the status and privileges of cripples. Job done.
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