Just do what the voters want, you bewigged twazzocks!
LAWYERS, for hours. Jings, they waffled. Some pinched the air with finger and thumbtip, bouncing on the balls of their feet and rolling their tongues like plum stones. Others listened with drollery, savouring fellow jurists’ Latin phrases, the cited subclauses, the velvety smarm – ‘in the words of that eminent judge’ – to chums at the Inns of Court.
Then Suella Braverman (Con, Fareham) triggered her pistols into the belly of the European Court of Human Rights. Suella, herself a lawyer, started quietly but by the end of her short speech was bellowing about the ‘distant, outsourced, foreign’ Strasbourg court. Eek, the F-word. A Labour MP shrieked. ‘We have stretched the patience of the British people,’ continued Mrs Braverman, eyeballs ablaze. Why should any immigrant convicted of drug dealing be allowed to claim British benefits? We should be allowed to chuck ’em out!
Stella Creasy (Lab, Walthamstow) looked as if she was going to faint. Smelling salts for Stella, quick.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was tacking its way across the gaping bay of Parliament. Once more our elected government, after being blocked in the Supreme Court, was trying to honour voters’ desire to secure our borders. Once more, lawyers stuck out their little pinkies and threw legal flotsam in the way.
It was all wildly clever. No doubt it would all pass muster with Halsbury’s Laws of England. But the average Joe, if present, might have ached to pelt them with turnips and shout ‘just do what the voters want, you bewigged twazzocks’.
Joanna Cherry KC (SNP, Edinburgh South West) orated for 20 minutes.
Felt longer. Some was in Latin. ‘Nobile officium,’ she said, ‘and I’ll explain what that means.’ Her explanation was in English but might as well have been in double Dutch. She moved on to the declaration of Arbroath in 1320, Article XIX of the Treaty of Union, and ‘the great Scottish judge Lord Cooper and the case of MacCormick v. Lord Advocate in 1953’. Near me there was a thud. The chap from the Telegraph had slumped to his desktop, stunned into unconsciousness.
‘Few are as familiar as I am with the vagaries and complexities of international law,’ announced Sir Jeremy Wright KC (Con, Kenilworth). Next to him perched two more barristers,
Sir Bob Neill and Sir Bobby Buckland. The former, a plump cheesepuff of twitches, was appalled that certain MPs called the Strasbourg court ‘foreign’. This was ‘somewhat offensive’, opined the Pooter of Chislehurst.
Most of the action was on the Tory benches. The mood? Oddly courteous. There was growing agreement among them that the European Court was ridiculous, yet disagreement about when to move against it.
THE best performances came from Robert Jenrick ( Con, Newark), who spoke fluently without notes, Tom Hunt (Con Ipswich), who waited five hours to contribute, and Bob Seely (Con, Isle of Wight), who put the case for Tory pragmatism.
Alison Thewliss (SNP, Glasgow Central) kept quoting Rabbie Burns. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Hansard Stenographers will be opening an investigation.
Sir Bill Cash (Con, Stone) made a legal joke. No one understood it. Stephen Kinnock, on Labour’s front bench, stretched out his skinny legs and admired his red socks and brown shoes. Tim Farron ( Lib Dem, Westmorland & Lonsdale) came over all chapel and said rights flowed from God.
Talking of whom, little Sir Bob announced that some hereditary peer who once chaired the Bar Council was ‘a personal friend of mine’.
The idea of the Commons used to be that MPs represented their electors, not legal mates in the Lords. Do we have dikigorocracy (rule by lawyers)? Or is it dicky democracy?
‘It’s been a very, very long day,’ said Nick Fletcher (Con, Don Valley). ‘Lawyers seem to be able to talk at this level. But the people who sent us here are still struggling to understand why, when we put illegal migrants on a plane, someone in Strasbourg can simply say no.’