You’re a naughty posh boy from a privileged background. Don’t do it again
Poor old Parliament. What a sorry state it’s in. In fact, it’s hard to say which will fall apart first: the building, or its inhabitants. Every one of them looks knackered, bleary, puffy of skin and wild of eye. But I don’t think it’s just Brexit that has drained
them – the late nights, the weary speeches, the endless miserable sequence of hopes raised and summarily dashed. I think it’s the feeling of weakness. Of helplessness. Of impotence. Impotence in the face of overwhelming events and overwhelming contempt.
This impotence was demonstrated by yesterday’s pitiful debate about Dominic Cummings. Mr Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director in 2016, had failed to appear before a Commons committee investigating “fake news”. MPS vented their indignation in a scene of desperate pathos. The crosser they sounded, the more impotent they looked.
Tom Brake (Lib Dem, Carshalton & Wallington) called him “arrogant”. Ian Lucas (Lab, Wrexham) called him “a contemptible person who has behaved contemptuously”. Tommy Sheppard (SNP, Edinburgh East) was not surprised. Mr Cummings, he snorted, was “just a posh boy from a privileged background” with an overweening “sense of entitlement”, who would no doubt boast about his defiance of Parliament “at his next dinner party”.
Michael Fabricant, Tory Brexiteer and MP for Lichfield, protested. “To categorise [Mr Cummings] as some sort of ‘posh boy’ is completely wrong,” he complained. “His father was an oil rig project manager, his mother was a special needs teacher, and he went to Durham School.” Mr Fabricant managed to make Durham School sound like a crumbling comp, rather than a 600-year-old boarding school that charges fees of £31,000 a year, a figure around £1,500 greater than the average British salary.
But, that minor dispute aside, MPS agreed that something must be done about him. But what?
Damian Collins (Con, Folkestone & Hythe) noted that “technically” the House still had “ancient powers” to “lock people up in a prison under Big Ben” – but these days such powers would be “considered unenforceable”.
Kate Green (Lab, Stretford & Urmston) recalled the “old practice” of summoning a transgressor for a dressing-down, but advised against it in Mr Cummings’ case, for fear that he would take it as an “opportunity to grandstand” (i.e., call them all useless on live TV). In the absence of stronger alternatives, Ms Green recommended that Mr Cummings “be admonished by resolution of the House, to be communicated to him by the Clerk”.
In other words, they’re going to write him a sternly worded letter, to be delivered by a middle-aged man in tights. As punishments went, Ms Green sighed, it was “fairly feeble”. But it was the best they could do. I don’t know whether Mr Cummings watched the debate from home.
But if he did, he probably enjoyed it very much.