Decorum and politeness make their right and honourable presence felt
Never can there have been a PMQS quite like yesterday’s. A week earlier, it had all been so different: even the diagnosis of a government minister with coronavirus wasn’t enough to deter more than 600 MPS from squeezing into the Commons to hear the Chancellor’s Budget statement. Yesterday, though, MPS finally started to accept that the Government’s advice to the public should apply to them, too.
Normally for PMQS, the chamber is packed. This time, it was almost empty. The only MPS allowed in were those with a question to ask. Between them, great stretches of green leather spread lonely and wide. “I want to thank MPS for the very responsible approach they’ve taken,” began Jeremy Corbyn, “by sitting a suitable distance apart”. A fine sentiment – although it might be observed that, despite the space available on the Labour front bench, Mr Corbyn himself was sitting side by side with his colleague Dawn Butler – and that, at 70, he ideally shouldn’t have been there at all.
PMQS certainly looked different – and it sounded different. None of the usual heckling or barracking. As the Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition spoke, everyone else sat silent, but for the odd solemn “hear, hear”. Rightly so, in the circumstances, although the absence of the familiar jeering din did make the occasional cough sound ominously loud.
All questions were constructive rather than partisan, and Boris Johnson greeted them in the same spirit: praising the questioner – and, for surely the first time on record, being polite to Ian Blackford. The SNP man urged the Prime Minister to introduce a universal basic income. In any previous week, Mr Johnson would have shooed Mr Blackford away like a wasp at a picnic. This time, he earnestly thanked him, said he was “quite right” about the need to support workers, and added that a universal basic income was “one of many” different ideas he’d received. Perhaps a diplomatic way of saying no – but he didn’t strictly rule it out, which in the past would have seemed remarkable in itself. But not as remarkable as the declaration moments later that now was “not the time to be squeamish about public sector debt”. Those were the words of a Tory MP: Felicity Buchan, the member for Kensington, no less. Yes, times really are changing – and fast.
Just think. Exactly two months ago, when the virus was claiming a second life in China, and snaking its way into Thailand and Japan, the most contentious issue in Westminster was “bunging a bob for a Big Ben bong”.
The war over Brexit was bitter and vicious. And yet so innocent. And already so long ago.