Mcdonnell’s misery brings out the joker in Hammond

Is there a gloomier experience in Parliament than listening to a speech by Labour’s John Mcdonnell? Lord, it’s dreary. Word by leaden, mournful word, I can feel the will to live draining out of me. With agonising slowness, time trundles past. It’s like a fortnight listening to a leaky tap. Drip.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

This is why it puzzles me, when critics caricature the shadow chancellor as this furious firebrand, this raging insurrectionist, feverish with lust for violence and revolt. I just can’t square that image with the doleful old soul I see bleating drably away at the Dispatch Box, with his bone-white hair and his undertaker’s suit. Listen to that voice, cold and grey, drifting across the chamber of the Commons like a sheet of January rain across an empty car park. Is that really the voice of revolution?

No. It’s the voice of Eeyore. An Eeyore who would nationalise Pooh Sticks and impose swingeing new taxes on jars of honey, sure. But Eeyore all the same.

Yesterday, MPS held the final day of debate on the Queen’s Speech, and Mr Mcdonnell was in characteristic mood.

“Are we proud of a Government that can’t feed its population?” he groaned. “Let me ask the members opposite: are they really proud that we have a Government that can’t adequately house its population?”

Stung, Tory MPS retorted that they were proud, actually. Proud of their employment figures. Proud of their economic growth. And proud, by the way, of doing more to tackle taxavoidance than Labour ever had.

For one brief, heady moment, I almost thought that, for the first time since records began, we would see Mr Mcdonnell laugh. Disappointingly, however, he didn’t. Instead he protested that Gordon Brown’s actions to tackle tax-avoidance were “10 times more effective” than anything the Tories had done.

Then something strange happened. Yes, even stranger than John Mcdonnell laughing.

Philip Hammond told a joke. “Er, let me do the maths, Madam Deputy Speaker,” said the Chancellor. “If he’s right, that would be... £1.5TRILLION they raised! Hmm!” He gestured behind him. “Maybe one of my honourable friends could just check down the back of the bench here, in case the previous Labour chancellor hid it there?”

Mr Hammond may not have been able to find £1.5trillion, but he did manage to scrape together some cash for an emergency. Stella Creasy (Lab, Walthamstow) had tabled an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, demanding that the Government pay for women from Northern Ireland to have abortions in England. The Government – terrified of defeat in the vote – caved in. Mr Hammond promised that he’d stump up the money. Ms Creasy had won. Amendment withdrawn.

Yes, welcome to life in the new Parliament: where any Labour demand that threatens to attract the support of only a few Tory rebels can become law in hours.

It’s almost enough to make John Mcdonnell smile.