Scarlet Nicola put on her best Mae West act
JUST after 11.30am, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, stepped in front of a gilt-framed mirror at her official residence and tossed a caber into the works. She had chosen to wear scarlet. Power shoulders, too. Plus a look of affected regret.
‘I wish we weren’t in this position,’ she claimed with one of her Ronnie Reagan head wobbles. Wonderful tosh! She was relishing her moment. In a few hours the House of Commons was again going to debate triggering Article 50. Miss Sturgeon’s intervention was attempted upstaging on a Mae West scale.
The microphones on the Bute House lectern, possibly erected only at the 11th hour, crackled and fluffed. Miss Sturgeon peered at the TV cameras, shrugged and rolled her dice. She was in front of the same chimney piece Alex Salmond used for a backdrop when he quit as First Minister after losing the 2014 referendum. High stakes. On the mantel were two antique urns, possibly good for ashes. It was a jolly pretty mirror, whatever else could be said about the tableau.
The London Government ‘had not moved even an inch’ in reaching a compromise with her over Brexit, intoned Miss Sturgeon. (For the benefit of BBC reporters, an inch is 2.54 centimetres.) She said she had hit ‘a brick wall of intransigence’. Some of us, knowing the SNP, felt a smidgen of sympathy for the wall.
Mrs May was ‘muscling in’ on Edinburgh’s powers, continued Miss Sturgeon in that grievance-brushed piccolo poet Shakespeare himself might have struggled to honour. She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, did some more tweaks of her Emlyn Hughes barnet and bit on her lip, having remembered not to look too obviously delighted. Look at me, her body language was saying. I am important. I am greedy for some of this Brexit publicity.
If there is an independence referendum in Scotland it may turn into a wrestling bout between Miss Sturgeon and the Tories’ Scottish leader, Ruth Davidson. The latter was soon on our television screens, giving it some goodish welly from an interview spot outside the Edinburgh Parliament building. Last time, a leading member of the ‘No’ to independence campaign was Labour’s Johann Lamont, a figure of Rosa Klebb frivolity. Miss Davidson is a punchier proposition. One would not envy the Pools panel having to predict the outcome of her match with Miss Sturgeon.
Three hours later the Commons opened for its week. The place was steaming. No, it really was. The Chamber was unbelievably hot. Something had gone wrong with the central heating and soon MPs were fanning themselves like senoras at a bull-fight. Sir Eric Pickles (Con, Brentwood & Ongar) had rashly chosen to wear a three-piece suit. Was that a mist of condensation rising from his bulging waistcoat? One had an awful image: RIVULETS of boob sweat!
At Defence Questions, Scots Nat MPs made themselves heard. They invariably do. They complained. They invariably do that, too. Whatever would we do without them at Westminster? Imagine: a Commons without Tasmina Ahmed- Sheikh (Ochil & S Perthshire). The good reporters of Hansard would weep with gratitude. Tasmina might not like it, though.
MICHAEL Fallon, Defence Secretary, reminded MPs that a lot of his budget is currently spent in Scotland – at Rosyth, Leuchars, Lossiemouth and elsewhere. But when we reached the main debate of the day, about Brexit, the SNP’s presence receded to the margins as Secretary of State David Davis, his shadow Sir Keir Starmer, Tory ex-Remainer Sir Oliver Letwin and Lib Dem melodramatist Dame Nick Clegg cantered over the arguments re: amendments to the Article 50 Bill.
‘No one, so far as I’m aware, wishes to fetter the Government,’ burbled Dominic Grieve (Con, Beaconsfield). Oh no? Mr Grieve would quite possibly be delighted if Brexit were blown to smithereens by Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism squad. He sat back in his seat with a look of delight at his cleverness. But his Remainer pals lost the evening’s Commons votes.