A salute to the women who REALLY keep Britain going
BUDGETS often have their standout moments. There was the time in 1853 when William Gladstone droned on for almost five hours, prompting much snoozing from bored MPs in the chamber.
Then there was Norman Lamont’s 1993 Budget, where he announced such thumpingly unpopular tax rises that he was out of a job two months later.
In 2022, meanwhile, Kwasi Kwarteng (remember him?) delivered such a disastrous mini-Budget that the moment he sat down the value of sterling plunged in markets worldwide.
Some moments even happen behind closed doors. Years ago, David Cameron told me that Ken Clarke liked a tipple before delivering the Budget, and favoured the Orkney malt Highland Park. Cin cin.
This year, it was the turn of Dame Eleanor Laing to take centre stage. And boy, did she. The deputy speaker, in the chair as part of her role as chairman of Ways and Means, stole the show when she intoned to a raucous chamber: ‘This is impossible. Could you please shout more quietly.’
There was, of course, uproarious laughter, but she got her point across. Particularly when she chastised Labour’s Wes Streeting, remarking witheringly: ‘You are too close to me to be shouting that loudly. If you want to shout that loudly, you should go away and sit up there.’
Laing’s demeanour – in control, headmistress-ish, but with enough humour to have the honourable members rolling in the aisles – embodies a certain type of Scottish woman with whom most of us are extremely familiar.
The sort who were headmistresses, or matrons on hospital wards, or the sternly powerful matriarchs of large families. The sort who, once upon a time, might have been described as the type of woman you wouldn’t want to take a ‘broken pay packet’ home to. Nowadays, though, you’ll often find them running the corporations, or court rooms, or indeed the country.
Laing is a fascinating case study. Born in Paisley and brought up in nearby Elderslie she gained two degrees – one in the arts, one in law – and became the first female president of the Edinburgh University Students’ Association.
Winning her seat as a Tory in 1997, despite the Labour landslide, she has been deputy speaker since 2013 and became a Dame in 2018.
And she’s really rather fun. Beautifully turned out, dry, quick on her feet, and with a brilliant mind that keeps her a couple of steps ahead of everyone else, particularly the MPs braying at her from the benches.
Joyously, the House of Lords has a few Laing-a-likes among its number these days. There’s the formidable Baroness Annabel Goldie, who I once saw deliver the greatest – and funniest – Reply from The Lassies I’ve ever witnessed at a Burns Supper. A former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, she has just finished a four-year stint as Minister of State for Defence in Westminster.
And of course Baroness Helena Kennedy, a hugely distinguished KC and the daughter of a Glasgow printer, who holds the record for rebelling against her party whip more frequently than any other Labour peer.
They’re the type of women who keep the country going, pick us up when the chips are down, and that frankly we need a lot more of.
THE women who, on the week of International Women’s Day, we should be thankful for. Because we all know a Laing-a-like, and they might not all be sailing around the corridors of power.
They might be the teacher who got you through those tough exams, or the neighbour who helped you when your parents couldn’t. They could be your mother, sister, auntie, or daughter.
Women forged in Scotland, tough as the earth itself, utterly no-nonsense but with a glorious twinkle in their eye.
While a question mark hangs over Lindsay Hoyle’s future as Speaker, then, I hope the House of Commons will consider that they could do a lot worse than have Dame Eleanor at the helm.