Corn-fed Jenrick stayed in his coop as brickbats flew
BWOK, bwok, bwarrrrk! Chicken alert! Parliament bagged itself a new premier poulet yesterday. This was not just any chicken, a la those grating M&S ads. This was a prized bantam.
Free-range, corn-fed, the whole kit and caboodle. Behold, Robert Jenrick, our plump-round-the-chops Housing Secretary, who was summoned to the chamber early doors to answer an ‘urgent question’ from Labour.
Instead of emerging to face the brickbats, he chose to remain firmly in his coop.
was he hoping to bury his beak in a pile of grain until trouble had passed? Such behaviour, I fear, will do nothing to reinforce Mr Jenrick’s image one bit. what a marshmallowy character he is. A twice-weekly shaver at best, would be my guess.
The UQ concerned Jenrick’s recent dealings with Richard Desmond, a one-time purveyor of exotic reading matter turned billionaire property developer.
No sooner had the minister’s department unlawfully approved a £1billion housing development Mr Desmond was proposing in London’s Docklands than a generous £12,000 donation was made to the Conservatives in January.
If there’s a smell test for these things this was surely more pungent than a pot of ammonia.
In Jenrick’s absence, we heard from his deputy Chris Pincher, a slight chap with the browbeaten looks of a man accustomed to thankless tasks such as these. The defence he served up of his boss was worthy of a greasing courtier.
Mr Jenrick considered every planning application ‘fairly and on its own merits,’ he said. He was committed to the ‘probity of the planning process at all levels.’
He has always acted with utmost integrity... yada yada ... Pincher waffled slowly, selecting each word with the care of a spinal surgeon.
A cynical man might have accused him of deliberately running the clock down. Steve Reed (Lab, Croydon N) raised the timing of Mr Desmond’s donation. ‘An astonishing coincidence,’ he scoffed.
Pincher revealed the donation had come in the form of tickets Mr Desmond purchased to a Tory fundraising dinner.
Ministers had nothing to do with ticket sales or donations, he remarked, his face beaming with innocence. Everything had been done in the ‘proper and usual way’.
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Lab, Slough) pointed out that Desmond had sat on the same table as Jenrick at that same dinner. Had he demanded he do so? ‘I have no idea what Mr Desmond asked for at that dinner, where he wished to be seated or who made the decision on where he was seated,’ Pincher replied with the airy voice of someone filing their nails.
AFTER forking out twelve grand on a rubber chicken dinner, one suspects Mr Desmond could have sat on Boris’s lap for the evening if he had chosen to.
This was murky stuff yet the atmosphere remained surprisingly mild. Fury was largely absent. Had this occurred in pre- coronavirus times, my hunch is there would have been a lot more frothy mouths around the chamber.
Conservative MPs tested Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s patience by asking irrelevant questions. James Daly (Con, Bury N) brought up some nonsense about housing in Manchester. ‘It might be helpful if Members were to go and read what the Urgent Question is about,’ Sir Lindsay barked.
when kevin Hollinrake (Con, Thirsk & Malton) tried to ask about social housing, he was told to sit down and be quiet. In the face of some pretty gamey evidence, Pincher held firm for forty minutes.
The fiercest flak came from north of the border. Alan Brown (SNP, kilmarnock and Loudoun) drew parallels with the ‘Dominic Cummings affair’. In sticking by Jenrick, the Government would be ‘defending the indefensible,’ he said. ‘The matter simply stinks.’
Richard Thomson (SNP, Gordon) demanded to know why Jenrick hadn’t bothered to show up for questioning himself. Pincher declined to answer. Someone later claimed to have spotted the minister cowering in the Commons tea rooms.
Even with everything else that’s going on, I’m not sure he’s going be able to hide from this forever.