Sneering, erratic and verbose, the Squeaker acts as if he’s untouchable
SPEAKER Bercow, who hates parliamentary sketchwriters who mention MPs’ looks, yesterday mocked a senior Tory backbencher for his (fading) facial resemblance to Prince Andrew.
The Squeaker referred to Altrincham & Sale West’s Graham Brady as ‘Prince Andrew over there’. It was a gratuitous if jovial dig. Mr Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, chose to take it well. He’s a decent sort.
Back in 1997, when Mr Brady first arrived in the Commons, a few of us sketchers did indeed remark that he was a ringer for the Duke of York. The joke soon faded, first because it lost its novelty, second because the Duke ran to fat whereas Mr Brady did not.
Why did Mr Bercow yesterday exhume that ancient joke? Hard to say. But the little fella has been behaving in an increasingly erratic manner since his re-election as Speaker. His verbosity has reached new levels (his response to one recent point of order filled almost an entire column of Hansard).
Last week he not only took hours off to high-tail it down to Wimbledon but also referred to the Monmouth Tory, David TC Davies, as ‘Top Cat’. His speech to the King of Spain was grotesquely unctuous. Yesterday he sneerily said MPs should get the Commons day’s timings ‘into their little grey cells’. Bercow currently thinks he is untouchable – and he is probably right. Hubris invariably precedes correction.
Yesterday’s Prince Andrew moment came as he was ticking off Cheltenham’s Alex Chalk (Con) for heckling a claim by Labour’s Education spokesman Angela Rayner (big strong lass) that the Tories’s new schools budgets showed they were reneging on their election manifesto.
This was a wonderful example of the old adage that shifty politicians accuse opponents of their old faults. Labour has just dropped its vote-winning promise to scrap university fees! Mr Chalk happened to be sitting next to HRH Mr Brady and that is why Bercow gave Mr Brady a mention.
Mrs Rayner’s accusation about the Tories reneging on their manifesto earned a proper spanking from Education Secretary Justine Greening. She flew into a riff about how Labour had lied to students – ‘one of the most dishonest pieces of electioneering I have ever seen’.
Young people deserved better than the Corbynite ‘ snake oil propaganda’ about college fees which had now been proved to be a lie, she said. Miss Greening was making a statement about allocating more money to schools.
Where was it coming from? The Education Department budget, apparently. Miss Greening said she was ‘unlocking funding’ and was ‘challenging my Department to make some efficiencies’. BEn
Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter) said she was raiding her capital budget. Miss Greening said she still wanted to keep school buildings shipshape. Tory backbenchers were happy with Miss Greening. Opposition MPs were grumpy. They often get that way when they see a grievance disappear.
If a few billion can be found from Education Department inefficiencies, what about the unbelievable fortune (£100billion?) likely to be blown on the HS2 railway? After a few HS2 criticisms from MPs last Thursday, and a valiant campaign by former Tory deputy Speaker Lord Framlingham, the Transport Department yesterday tried to stop any uncertainty over the project by announcing a fat tranche of HS2 contracts.
Yet Transport Secretary Chris Grayling was not going to make a statement. Backbenchers on both sides – among them Ed Miliband and Angela Smith for Labour, Cheryl Gillan and Michael Fabricant for the Conservatives – put up a barrage of complaints. It was made plain to Mr Grayling that he should haul his bones down to the Commons.
He eventually agreed to do so just before 10pm.
Civil servants, if not Mr Grayling himself, were trying to pull a fast one. HS2 is high-speed after all, I guess. They want to create a sense that it is too late to stop that richpeople’s railway line. If so, can billions of pounds’ worth of ‘efficiencies’ not be found?