Five years on, Dr Fox returns to play some classy strokes
FOr meritocrats, a mixed day. Education Secretary Justine Greening defended – up to a point – the possible expansion of grammar schools. Liam Fox played some classy strokes on his despatch box return as International Trade Secretary.
This was balanced by two grotty pieces of news. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley announced that the next Arts Council chairman will be snooty dumber- down Sir Nicholas Serota, epitome of destructive egalitarianism.
And MPs approved the appointment of a Whitehall clunker as the new Civil Service Commissioner. His name is Ian Watmore and he is a friend (please don’t say puppet) of Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy ‘Cover-Up’ Heywood.
Miss Greening was obliged to answer an ‘urgent question’ from Labour. The Education Department’s dimwit of a Permanent Secretary had let a Downing Street photographer glimpse some documents which mentioned grammar schools.
Let’s hope that mandarin is given detention. The Left has gone into neck-clutching panic at the thought of more grammars.
They don’t want their client vote becoming all aspirational, thank you very much.
Labour frontbencher Angela rayner screamed her way through a speech of class-war gibberish, as coarse an effort as I have heard from any education spokesman. Ms rayner might be useful in a bar brawl – she has good reach and a certain feral energy – but I’m not sure she would pass any 11-plus exam in dialectics.
She has been an MP little more than a year. In ordinary times she would have served an apprenticeship on the backbenches but under the Corbyn Terrors she is the Shadow Secretary of State.
Miss Greening treated Ms rayner’s effort as dog walkers will handle messes left by their pooches: with antiseptic thoroughness, disposing of it efficiently, without undue drama. Dr Fox had earlier answered his first departmental questions. Speaker Bercow told off MPs for not being quick enough with their questions.
That did not stop the Speaker himself wasting time by making weak jokes and even at one point doing a Tony Benn impression. ‘Ha ha ha,’ fluttered flatterers’ voices.
Dr Fox paraded some impressive detail about the World Trade Organisation. He dealt deliciously with a Lib Dem who tried to come over all patronising. He teased his own backbenchers, too.
It is five years since he left the Cabinet over that bizarre to-do regarding his little lobbyist friend. Yesterday’s assured turn at the despatch box was reminder of what a solid parliamentary performer he can be.
Culture Questions was less uplifting. Miss Bradley, who has replaced thoughtful John Whittingdale, has not done much front-of-house stuff in her parliamentary career to date. She is no orator. ‘Myself and the Minister of State are working very hard,’ she said in the opening minutes. I have spent years, as a father, drumming it into my children’s brains not to say ‘me and my friend’. Here was the Culture Secretary – Culture! –committing the same horrible solecism.
The Minister of State, by the way, is Matt Hancock, who was once going to rule the world. Poor Hancock is now reduced to this minor brief containing local television and stately homes. He seems to have tweaked his accent. Yesterday he pronounced words such as ‘Hull’, ‘culture’ and ‘glass’ with a northern English accent we never heard from him during the Cameroon ascendancy.
As Arts Minister he will presumably have been consulted about the appointment of Sir Nicholas. After this was announced yesterday, not a single MP pursued it. Instead they talked about things such as table tennis, motorsport and ‘hate crime’ (Miss Bradley made the entirely vacuous assertion that ‘there is no place in our society for hatred’).
Well, I can tell you, lady, that some of us, when we contemplate the damage done to meritocracy, national aesthetics, working-class aspiration, art teaching and Western civilisation by Sir N Serota and his ilk, feel an anger fuelled by outrage and, yes, boiling hatred, and no amount of Whitehall waffle will deter us.