Quentin Letts
Quiet man of the Commons was suddenly full of gas...
SUDDENLY it’s all go from Royston Smith (Con, Southampton Itchen). He spoke in the Commons both on Monday and yesterday. Good grief. It’s an eruption.
Royston – does the Christian name not convey unspoken stolidity? – had since his election in 2015 become the near-silent man of the Commons. Other MPs blethered and bored, boinging to their feet to orate and prate.
Our Royston kept his counsel. Let the Bryants and Fabricants, the ghastly Cherry, boring Brake and insufferable Bercow jabber as much as they liked. Verbal diarrhoea was not for Smith, R., thank ye.
The man from Itchen sat silently on the green leather benches. He would listen intently, cocking his head sometimes like an inquisitive spaniel. I swear that once or twice I saw him on the verge of speech, quivering, like a night-blooming cactus about to flower – only for him to reconsider such rashness and subside again to his habitual sedentary constipation, hand to chin or brow as within himself he grappled the issues of the day.
This former RAF engineer, 53, did not waste words. Where was the sense in that? Some backbenchers regard it as their life’s work to be quoted in the local newspaper, howsoever witlessly. ‘Local MP demands League of Nations intervene in Mesopotamia war’ or ‘Tsar of Russia torn off a strip by town man in Commons adjournment debate’.
Mr Smith preferred to keep his powder dry. He did not offer lowhanging fruit to those hungry scamps of the Southern Daily Echo and its newsdesk. Let them, like him, crouch in the slips for hours – months! – as they awaited their moment. Between the general election and Christmas, Mr Smith’s yeoman voice was heard in just six debates, although in one of those – a Westminster Hall debate on balancing the public finances – his effort was in vain because a Labour MP, the cur, declined to accept an intervention from our hero. In July Mr Smith contributed to a discussion on Grenfell Tower. In October he asked a health question about oesophageal cancer, a defence question about Daesh and he ventured out of his tortoise shell to make a point on income tax thresholds. Just before Christmas he spoke in a debate about slavery in Libya. And that was it.
Labour MP Jared O’Mara (Sheffield Hallam) may have been more mute but that has been down to political difficulties. Sinn Fein MPs never say anything because they never turn up. Mr Smith’s reticence was of a different kidney and can, I hope, be interpreted as the preference of an honourable man not to waste the House’s time unless he had something pressing to utter. Some criticised his economy of oratory. They claimed that because Mr Smith did not speak regularly in the Commons Chamber, he was a duffer. This seemed unfair.
Duffers more often advertise their duffness by dribbling away interminably in the Commons (exhibits shown to the jury at this point by learned counsel: Huddersfield’s voluble Barry Sheerman and the Strangford burbler Jim Shannon).
Is there not honour in silence? To the hall of acclaim that already includes Harpo Marx, Mrs Columbo and Chief from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest could be added the noble moniker of the Hon Royston Smith, the man who did not witter.
But suddenly, as I say, he is all gas. Two contributions in two days. There’s no corking the man! At Defence Questions on Monday he leapt to his feet to ask about the well-being of the RAF personnel who carry out remote drone strikes against Daesh. And yesterday, in Treasury Questions, he invited Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to confirm that income inequality was worse in the years of New Labour. Mr Hammond said that yes, this was indeed the case.
A planted question? From Royston Smith? Are the Whips desperate? Or has the quiet man of Itchen decided to join the 21st century? If so, is this an improvement? Discuss. But not too much, please.