Is there a touch of old man Steptoe to Labour’s leader?
FoR the past week the Speaker, John Bercow, has been stirring trouble against the Chinese government. The little chap has projected himself quite the international campaigner for democracy.
But yesterday, when asked to defend the Commons after the unelected Lords’ tax-credits vote, Mr Bercow wafted aside the thought. it was not his job to intervene in such matters, nooo nooo nooo. The Chair was there simply to ensure that ‘ order’ was maintained.
That from a Speaker who has frequently tried to interfere in things beyond his remit and has swanned round the world firstclass to make pompous speeches about democracy.
We had just had an hour of Treasury Questions, where George osborne seemed not so much ‘humiliated’ (Fleet Street verb of the day) as irked and insistent. it is possible that Mr osborne was not easy company at breakfast yesterday. His pet dog – a bichon frise named Lola – may have been wise to keep a good yard from Master’s right boot.
in his first sentence of the day the Chancellor spat out a reference to the ‘unelected Labour and Lib Dem peers’ who had voted down his savings on tax credits. ‘This raises a clear constitutional issue that we will deal with,’ he said bluntly. Was that a twitch in his right eye, a tic in his left cheek?
Even before he uttered a syllable Mr osborne was cheered, hys- terically, by near- full Tory benches. The osborne Whipping operation had been busy. Behind the Chancellor sat Alec Shelbrooke (Con, Elmet & Rothwell), who makes Brian Blessed seem soft-spoken.
Repeatedly Mr osborne said the national books had to be balanced and ‘choices have to be made’ (ie cuts imposed).
His one conciliatory phrase was that he would ‘lessen the impact on families during the transition’ to a lower tax, lower welfare system. oh, and he was going to ‘lis- ten’. Up sprang some of the more independent- minded Tories to offer support. Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough), seldom helpful to ministers, said it was ‘not right that unelected people should decide how people are taxed’. DiTTo non-Cameroon Tories Philip Davies ( Shipley), Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) and even Liam Fox (N Somerset), who argued that the average taxpayer now coughs up ‘£2,000 a year in extra tax just because of the Government’s debt-interest payments’.
A more skilful Treasury might make more of such statistics rather than letting the Left dominate airwaves with its Dickensian wails about starving children being denied new shoes to the extent that their toes become sore (copyright Lady Hollis in her Tiny Tim speech on Monday). Unless we reduce the welfare state, coming generations really will be poor!
Jeremy Corbyn was present to hear all this. For an opposition leader to attend a Tuesday Question Time was unusual but welcome. is there perhaps something of old man Steptoe (as played by the late Wilfrid Brambell) to Mr Corbyn? A slender new Labour MP, Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham Deptford) rose just behind Mr Corbyn. The Labour leader turned and – i hesitate to report this but it is God’s truth – his eyes ran up and down Ms Foxcroft’s lithe frame. He even sucked his teeth as he was doing so. He later made joky gestures to Sister Foxtrot.
He also walloped one of his frontbenchers, Emily Thornberry, on the right arm as he left the Chamber. Not many men live to do that.
And then we had the Points of order, at which Mr Bercow was urged by Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) to remind the Lords of the 1678 Declaration of Privilege with which the Commons asserted its right to decide financial matters. Mr Bercow almost stalled before waffling that ‘i don’t think it helps if the Chair adds in substantive terms without exceptionally good reason to the total number of evaluative comments already made’.
GCHQ’s translators are still working on this verbal tangle but i think Mr Bercow, so-called defender of democracy, meant ‘anything that screws Cameron and osborne and helps my Labour mates is fine by me’.