Mr Corbyn got angry, biting his beard and muttering to himself
ALL the drama was on the Labour benches. Jeremy Corbyn performed okay at Prime Minister’s Questions. He had David Cameron floundering with questions about Yorkshire floods. Labour are trying to turn the northern English flooding into a class issue. But behind Mr Corbyn and to either side, with drawn-dagger stares and surly scowls, sat his enemies. Like that poor castle in Aberdeenshire, Mr Corbyn was being undermined by a torrent – dissent in full spate.
The mutiny was startlingly open. In the House I have neither seen anything so brazen nor heard such a silence as that which greeted Mr Corbyn. You might have thought his allies would have cheered him but instead there just fell a wind-whistled nothingness. Could the Labour Whips not have arranged supportive noise? Alas, Mr Corbyn has allowed distance to develop between himself and his Chief Whip, Dame Rosie Winterton.
Before PMQs, Westminster was a-tingle with the sacking of Shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden, who had criticised Left-wing apologists of terrorism. Mr McFadden’s dawn interview on Radio 4, calmly critical of Mr Corbyn, had freshened the sensation.
Shortly before PMQs we heard of two Labour frontbench resignations – little-known figures called Reynolds and Doughty. A third (Defence spokesman Kevan Jones, a heftier presence) came during PMQs.
Mr McFadden, with feline lightness, had selected a backbench seat near the top right of the Chamber as you look towards the Chair. He chose the second bench from the back, one favoured by Blairites.
Near him sat the likes of Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper, Liam Byrne, Angela Smith. Mr Umunna leaned across to pat Mr McFadden on the thigh. Ian Austin, sitting a few feet away, stood, stepped up and shook the McFadden hand. Wayne David did likewise. All this was done in full view of the Conservatives. It was a flaunting of distaste for the Corbynistas.
The session’s first question, from Tory Karen Lumley (Redditch) capitalised on this. She asked the PM to assure her that no minister would ever be sacked for condemning terrorist attacks (for this, let it be recalled, is what seems to have happened to the hapless Mr McFadden). Mr Cameron blurted out a few prepared sentences attacking Mr Corbyn’s mishandling of the Labour reshuffle.
In the big bad world, North Korea had tested a nuclear bomb, the Chinese economy was in trouble and Iran and Saudi Arabia were in dispute. None of these matters was raised. During Mr Corbyn’s contributions, neat and slender Stephen Kinnock (Lab, Aberavon) chatted in jocular fashion to big, untidy Jess Phillips (Lab, Yardley). Their expressions did not suggest undying admiration for their leader.
When Nadhim Zahawi (Con, Stratford-on-Avon) mentioned William Shakespeare, an off-form Mr Cameron hurried into another passage of scripted gags. He had been wondering if the Labour reshuffled would ‘go into its Twelfth Night’, thought it had been a ‘Comedy of Errors’ and was worried that ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’.
MR Corbyn became oddly angered by this lightweight nonsense. He muttered to himself, biting his beard, casting eyes hither and thither. Another little behavioural detail to report: The index finger of Hilary Benn’s left hand. A Tory MP, Peterborough’s Stewart Jackson, noted that the new Shadow Defence Secretary, Emily Thornberry, had ‘seen fit to take a donation from the immoral, thieving and ambulancechasing lawyers’ who have been ‘hounding our brave service personnel in Iraq with spurious claims’ of human-rights abuses.
Mr Cameron flew into a denunciation of the Labour Left and said he was amazed that Centrists such as Mr Benn had not resigned from the Shadow Cabinet. It was at this point that Mr Benn’s index finger began tapping out an agitated beat. Had a nerve been touched?
As the session ended, yet more Labour MPs rushed up to Mr McFadden to squeeze his arm, shake his hand and show sympathy. They included Yvette Cooper, Emma Reynolds, Adrian Bailey and Toby ‘Burly’ Perkins, who at the time of writing is a Labour Defence spokesman. For how much longer?