The little porkie pie-er jumped to his tootsies
BORIS Johnson, listening to Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, passed colourful verdict on the Labour leader’s analysis. ‘B***ocks!’ harrumphed the Foreign Secretary.
And no, although he was looking towards Emily Thornberry just beforehand, the word was not ‘buttocks’.
Can you blame Boris? Mr Corbyn is never terribly good at filleting Government policy. Put it like this, you wouldn’t want him de-boning your Dover sole at Bentley’s fish restaurant. You’d end up with little more than the head and some mushed skin. ‘You want some tartare sauce with that, Comrade?’
In the Commons, Mr Corbyn has almost given up trying to harpoon Theresa May with clever questions. He just goes for demotic riffs which can be used on social media. Yesterday he said, ‘ The Government are not on the road to Brexit – they’re on the road to nowhere’. It won’t take long for Labour’s marketing people to put that on a video with the Talking Heads pop song Road To Nowhere.
Having uttered his line, Mr Corbyn sat down. He had not actually asked Mrs May a question but, well, why should that worry him? In the Corbyn view of the world, Parliament is not a forum for inquiry and dialectic. It is a platform – no more than that. Dogmatists see little point in debate.
Boris, with his naughty word, might want to beware Speaker Bercow, who yesterday gave the House one of his self-important tellings-off about its behaviour.
Better Speakers and Deputy Speakers control the House by force of their personality. The Squeaker is not able to do that, so he shrieks a halt to proceedings, jumps to his tootsies and issues what he thinks is a patronising admonition to this gathering of our representatives. It happened yesterday when Mrs May was being loudly heckled. She was managing fine but Bercow took it upon himself to intervene. It’s the Capt Mainwaring ‘I’m in charge’ side of his character.
He told MPs they were out of step with the ‘culture’ on ‘harassment’. The public hated rudeness in politics, claimed a man who himself has repeatedly been the most batey of tonsil-wagglers.
Mr Bercow added a gratuitous dig at journalists, saying ‘I could not care less about the Press Gallery’.
Oooh, the little porkie pie- er. He cares TERRIBLY about what we inkies say. No Speaker in history has gone to such efforts to grab publicity.
Was the Speaker showing off for some VIP visitors?
Paul Scully (Con, Sutton & Cheam) disclosed that a delegation of French MPs was in the galleries, watching proceedings. At this, some of the French visitors started waving to everyone, like contestants at the start of a TV game show. Alan Brown (SNP, Kilmarnock & Loudoun) asked a question, possibly about Cabinet ministers being up for hire.
I say ‘ possibly’ because the House’s acoustics are not perfect for catching Mr Brown’s strong East Ayrshire accent. When he speaks, Hansard stenographers wrinkle their eyes as though blinded by lemon juice, so hard must they concentrate to catch his gems. The House yesterday cocked its head left and right. Suella Fernandes (Con, Fareham) shook her bonce in bafflement. Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe) reined back her nostrils, defeated by Mr Brown’s impenetrable brogue. MR
Bercow again halted proceedings and said that although he had not been able to decode what Mr Brown said, any suggestion of ministers being corrupt was quite untenable. Mr Brown blinked. Perhaps he finds us as incomprehensible as we find him.
Miss Soubry and her fellow Europhiles Nicky Morgan and Justine Greening sat in a row at the back. They’d be terrific in the Scottish play, those three.
Meanwhile, the London Evening Standard (editor: G. Osborne) ran a story about how badly the Tories had done in an opinion poll in London. Can George be surprised? Almost every day since he took command of the Standard, the newspaper has run headlines about how useless his former rival Mrs May is as Prime Minister!