Labour focus on nasty tweets ignores elephant in the room
Lucy Powell, he shadow Commons leader, decried “highly personalised and wrong-headed attacks by sections of the media” towards Members of Parliament. These were fuelling “hatred, disdain” and “security threats”, she added. That was us sketchwriters told, I suppose.
It was unclear precisely what the radiant, competent and not at all irritating-to-listen-to Ms Powell was actually referring to, especially as she pulled faces when her own party’s record was raised. It was telling that she chose to make today’s debate – which preceded a weighty statement about MPS’ security – about the sort of language Labour feels comfortable policing, as opposed to facing up to that which it finds more awkward.
There is a difference between weekly calls for genocide in the streets of London and saying, for instance, that Sir Keir Starmer uses more haircare product than a teenage girl, or that Rishi Sunak buys his clothes from Mothercare. But no, Ms Powell’s implication was that this was all part of the same problem that could be solved if we were all a bit nicer to each other.
Business Questions had once again become an opportunity for the Commons to air favourite grievances. Powell deplored the Tories’ “watering down” of the Online Safety Bill, and called for Penny Mordaunt to condemn Lee Anderson’s block-footed remarks, even though he’d already had the whip withdrawn. Given last week’s events, this was not so much dancing around the issue as a full Busby Berkeley-sized choreographed kick-line circling the great elephant in the room.
Ms Mordaunt, stern and brisk, tried without much success to bring the conversation away from nasty tweets and back towards the subversion of democracy.
Andrew Bridgen, MP for people who talk to themselves at bus stops, rounded off the session in particularly nutty style, calling for a debate on the return of capital punishment for “crimes against humanity”. Ms Mordaunt thanked him for his “incredibly subtle question” – i.e. not subtle at all.