Can perky Lisa convert her energy into power?
NEXT! Already Labour types are eyeing partyleadership successors to Jeremy Corbyn. One possible candidate is said to be Wigan’s Lisa Nandy. Aged 36, she has just joined the Shadow Cabinet as Labour’s spokesman on Energy and Climate Change and was at the despatch box yesterday morning for departmental questions.
Can petite, perky Lisa with her pukka background yet Coronation Street vowels reach power through Energy? Will Climate Change be her thermal riser?
In politics it helps to have weak opponents. In this respect Miss Nandy is unfortunate: she is up against Energy Secretary Amber Rudd, sparky as an old Scalextric set. Miss Rudd is the one with the windmill hand movements and carthorse gait and deadly handbag(s), heavy-laden and quite capable of skittling any old men foolish enough to stray into her orbit. Miss Rudd is a good-humoured honker who also happens to be bright.
Yesterday she was asked by Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) if it was true her department might be merged with Sajid Javid’s lot at Business. ‘ This is an incredibly important department,’ boomed Miss Rudd. ‘ And I would l i ke to scotch rumours that the constituency of Wellingborough is in any danger as well.’
A quick, classy putdown: it earned a laugh and contained just enough shadow of a threat to remind Mr Bone that the coming constituency boundaries review could make life awkward for Tory rebels. One dreads to think what will happen to Howden and Haltemprice...
Labour yesterday focused on Government subsidies for solar power. Miss Nandy and colleagues are in favour of such handouts. The Tories think the solar industry ought to get by with less state support – ideally none.
Miss Nandy made a gaffe-free debut. She looked composed but, well, she did not generate much electricity. Other Labour MPs (and one Tory with the possibly satirical surname of Sturdy) fretted that a reduction in subsidies to solarpower firms would kill thousands of jobs.
Miss Rudd was not entirely dogmatic in response, so the Nandyites may be on to something.
More interesting was the line taken by the Sage of Kettering, Philip Hollobone (Con). There are f ew subjects on which t his philosopher does not possess an opinion. From immigration to traffic cones, hedgehog preservation to world peace, Mr Hollobone is prepared to vouchsafe a solution.
These answers to the world’s most knotty dilemmas, moreover, can be boiled down into a parliamentary soundbite of less than 15 seconds. If Mr Hollobone had only been al i ve in t he 19th century I think you would have found that the Schleswig-Holstein question could have been solved before elevenses.
Yesterday Mr Hollobone noted the blight of solar-power farms, whereby acres of farmland are devoted to ugly solar panels.
TOTAL madness. I know of a planning application for s ome j ust north of Hereford where prime agricultural land may soon be covered in such panels. Given global food shortages, it is immoral that good land is thus abused.
Anyway, Mr Hollobone came up with the solution that solar panels should instead be sited on factory roofs. I felt a terrible ache and realised what it was: I had found myself agreeing with something the Sage had said. Worrying.
Later we had first sight of Chris Bryant as Shadow Leader of the Commons. Many mock Mr Bryant as Captain Underpants – he once took a snapshot of himself in his not-so-smalls – and I am not about to stop their fun. But you have to admit he is a strong performer at the despatch box.
He dances, darts, jests, jousts, leaps from sober patriotism to camp hyperbole, all the time teasing and, dread word, probing. And he is lucky in his opponent, the beyond-parody clunker Chris Grayling. Mr Bryant buzzed him yesterday like one of those biplanes swarming round King Kong.
I hesitate to sound Holloboneish, but why doesn’t Labour just choose Chris Bryant as its next leader? Oh, if only he hadn’t gone to public school.