And so a jailbird manages to pervert the course of British history
Could it be that the farcical proceedings in the Houses of Parliament are being scripted? Just as the Greek gods were once pictured moving mortals around a chessboard for their own amusement, perhaps some master satirist, a 21st century Ben Jonson, is busy inventing deranged actions and hypocritical
speeches for outrageous comic characters such as Sir Oliver Wetwin (the strategic genius who let a burglar into his house for a wee), the boiled hobgoblin Bercow and that screeching pantomime dame Soubry. If so, the satirist excelled themselves on Wednesday night when a vote on the Cooper Bill, which would delay Brexit, was passed by a majority of one.
And who was that one, the singular soul whose vote overturned the will of 17.4 million people? None other than Fiona Onasanya, the convicted criminal and MP for Peterborough, released from imprisonment on Feb 26. Previously, Ms Onasanya had limited herself to perverting the course of justice; now she took a giant step forward and perverted the course of British history.
It would take Sir Tom Stoppard, at the very least, to craft a coup de theatre in which a jailbird Member of Parliament, who represents one of the most fervent Leave constituencies in the country, scores the winning goal in the final minute for Remain.
And the aghast brethren of Britain cried out as one, “But how can such a scoundrel be permitted to vote on matters which affect our national future when she has been cast out by Labour and has worn the Anklet of Shame?”
Even after the frankly demented activities of the past few days this is a scarcely credible plot development.
We still have a Prime Minister who announces the latest horrendous setback as if the crisis had nothing to do with her and decides, unilaterally, that a solution to that crisis will be found once she embraces the
allotment revolutionary and Tory nemesis, Comrade Corbyn. We have a House of Lords, whose purpose is to scrutinise legislation, in which Labour peers yesterday kept calling closure motions so no one could speak. There may be better words to describe this theatre of the absurd, but the ones I find myself drawn to are “absolutely” and “mental”. Time to call the men in white coats.
Peterborough council is now having to fork out £500,000 on a Recall Petition because the city’s MP has neither the self-awareness nor the dignity to resign. Locals point to the fact that if a by-election is held after June, she will have served as an MP for two years and be entitled to a Loss of Office Payment. Amazingly, even if you are a congenital liar and a solicitor who could be struck off by the Law Society, you can still claim.
Fiona Onasanya should not really be an MP at all. A colleague talks of a “perfectly pleasant” councillor, “completely vacant and not the brightest button in the sewing box”, who was put up for Peterborough in 2017, just five weeks before the general election, when the original Labour candidate had childcare issues.
Onasanya, chosen because she “ticked all the identity-politics boxes”, was apparently so shocked when she squeaked the seat by 607 votes that she barely managed to splutter out a 30-second speech: “I’m the chance for change.” Arriving at Westminster, the 34-year-old was seemingly “totally out of her depth”. After nine months, with inadequate support, she was “really struggling” with a backlog of “800 unanswered emails”.
When she got into trouble with the police for two speeding incidents in July and August 2017, she claimed (with her brother Festus) that someone else was driving. Any sane person would have put their hands up and admitted that, under huge personal strain, they had acted to protect their brother. That might well have been enough to save her reputation and her career. But Onasanya persisted in foolish falsehoods and ended up in court on a charge of perverting the course of justice. At a retrial in December 2018, she was found guilty and immediately suspended from the Labour Party. She was the first sitting female MP to be jailed. Bizarrely, Onasanya continued to protest her innocence. On her release, she issued a frankly potty video statement in which she appeared, for no apparent reason, against the backdrop of a New York skyline. The disgraced MP also claimed defiantly that she was in good Biblical company: “Christ was accused and convicted by the courts of his day.”
Hell – what do standards of conduct matter when you’ve got a referendum result to trash?
Yes he was, although not for speeding. And, given that Jesus promised to take the sins of the world upon Himself, he would surely have fessed up to exceeding 50mph in a built-up area – and not blamed John the Baptist.
It’s never a promising sign when someone starts comparing themselves to the Son of God. It usually ends up with nudity and a psychiatric ward.
Nonetheless, Fiona Onasanya had her second coming. For the crucial vote on Wednesday, Labour whips summoned a convicted criminal that they had expelled from the party.
Hell, what do standards of conduct matter when you’ve got a referendum result to trash?
Of course, Fiona Onasanya is not personally responsible for the success of a Bill which legally requires the Prime Minister to go crawling to Brussels to beg for an extension to Article 50.
Hers was just one of 313 votes to banjax Brexit. If she hadn’t been in the Commons, however, the attempted coup would have failed.
Brilliant, eh? See how that master satirist of our Rotten Parliament pulled all the Brexit themes together there? The character of an amoral MP, who seems only to care about her personal survival, is allowed to destroy the very thing that 61 per cent of her constituents voted for. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what we must now call democracy. Fiona Onasanya is the perfect comic villain for these shameless times. The farce in the House of Clowns threatens to run and run. But before long it will be time for a whole new drama.
The Revenger’s Tragedy.