More eyeliner than a hoofer from Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert
TORY backbenchers, disgruntled by drift, were much bucked by yesterday’s collaring of ‘ this man’, as Theresa May called Abu Qatada. At last, some action! The Home Secretary had come to the House to make a Statement.
‘Today officers arrested and detained him,’ said Mrs May. Tory benches: ‘Hooray!’
‘ Deportation might still take some time,’ she added. Labour MPS (who had been glum): ‘Ah!’
Mrs May: ‘The rule of law must be followed.’ Everyone now looked thoughtful, not daring to boo this sentence. Mrs May: ‘But I believe he should remain in custody throughout. He is a risk to our national security.’ Tories: ‘Hear hear!’ Put it like this, Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) was so pleased that he waved his Order Paper in the air. For this most independent-minded of Tory MPS to express delight at a ministerial decision is like a teenager agreeing to make his bed.
Near Mr Pritchard sat a nest of Right-wing thrusters, most noticeable of them Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet & Rothwell). Mr Shelbrooke stroked his magnificent tummy. It was the loving, appreciative gesture of a valet buffing a vintage Bentley’s mudguard.
Such Tory happiness made life tricky for the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. She was sporting a new look which involved more eyeliner than a hoofer from Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert. This make- over includes a slower, less shrieky vocal delivery. It makes her sound older, more composed. But the House became restive at the length of her remarks. Even the Speaker dared to suggest that she might wish to speed up the gramophone.
Had Miss Cooper stopped five minutes earlier she would have done fine. As it was, she encountered a squall of heckles and ended sounding truculent, desperate for purchase. Nonetheless, May versus Cooper remains interesting tennis: well-matched singles, both players ace at expressing icy dismay.
Earlier, the Home Affairs select committee heard from the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-howe. What a splendid specimen: aged 54, he has a ramrod spine, a neck as thick as a steel girder, a brow corrugated by stern concentration. We have not seen a hero this manly since the days of Nevil Shute’s novels.
AT THE table, Rozzer Bernard leaned forward, his muzzle munched up like a boxer dog’s, his voice brisk Yorkshire. His eyes gleamed, small, wrinkled, wet. The contrast with the committee’s buttery chairman Keith Vaz was striking.
David Winnick (Lab, Walsall N) asked the Commissioner if he was surprised by recent alleged racism in the police. ‘Yes.’
Mr Winnick was surprised that he was surprised. Mr Hogan-howe said he was sorry Mr Winnick was surprised. Then old Winnick’s mind wandered and he mistakenly said he was surprised that the Commissioner was not surprised. This surprised Mr Vaz who said: ‘But he IS surprised.’ This surreal detour took about five minutes. Listening, I felt trapped in a string bag. Mr Hogan- Howe, giving a James Coburn squint, clenched his jaw.
I n separate exchanges, the committee also quizzed the BBC’S head of editorial standards, David Jordan, about the Beeb’s use of private eyes. Mr Jordan proved a consummate wicket-keeper, catching every full buzzer and fizzing beamer lobbed his way. The picky MPS probed and pushed, demanding to know if the BBC had policies and processes and editorial guidelines and sets of standards and protocols and signing- off procedures and statutory regimes.
The most persistent interrogator was Lorraine Fullbrook (Con, South Ribble), who seems an officious type, the very opposite of a liberal spirit. Is BBC journalism not already constipated by committeedom?
Mrs Fullbrook might have made a good traffic warden. Quite what she is doing in the supposedly small- state Conservative Party may be a different matter.