Blue corner delivers sucker punches in the battle of home secretaries
With her flyaway hair and mutinous scowl, Yvette Cooper exuded a kind of static rage in the Commons yesterday, as if she’d been clutching a Van der Graaf generator powered by her own blood pressure. Even her innocuoussounding urgent question – “to ask the Secretary of State to make a statement about refugees from Ukraine” – was muttered furiously, halfway between the ride of the Valkyries and a sullen teen who has been grounded.
On today of all days, fending off the Home Office’s critics was no dream gig. On Wednesday, Opposition MPS had bayed for blood (“where is she?!” they shrieked as Ian Blackford tore into the absent Home Secretary). But today Priti Patel gave every appearance of delight at being there. “Mr Speaker, I’m grateful for the opportunity to update the House,” she trilled. It was the tone of someone who’d unexpectedly scored Centre Court tickets, not one awaiting an hour of grilling at the hands of some of Labour’s more effective opponents.
Patel kept her eyes rigidly glued to her script as she announced a new “streamlined” approach to refugees. The Home Office had, she maintained, always sought to find an approach that was both “pragmatic” and – deploying that pet word of Conservative politicians everywhere – “agile”. Only very occasionally would a particularly loud heckle trigger a brisk shake of the head or world-weary sigh.
Having stared across the chamber with a glazed, almost shell-shocked expression on her face, Yvette Cooper suddenly spurred into action when the Home Secretary sat down. Up she sprung, removing her glasses so dramatically it all but promised verbal fisticuffs. “Why,” she spat, “does it always take being hauled into the House of Commons to make basic changes to help vulnerable people who are fleeing from Ukraine?”
The Labour MPS, primed to perfection, booed and hissed in all the right places when she reeled off a list of appalling case studies, calling them a “total disgrace”.
But the Home Secretary’s treaclysweet demeanour soon morphed into something altogether more dangerous. “Of course it is the job of Opposition just to attack the Government rather than finding collective solutions,” she replied, with a faint curl of the lip.
To questions from Opposition MPS, she offered wrinkly-nosed expressions of contempt.
Joanna Cherry demanded, as SNP members are wont to do, an immediate apology from the Government to everyone affected by Home Office back-sliding.
One curved eyebrow darted menacingly up the Home Secretary’s forehead. “If I may – to correct the Honourable Lady,” she began, before reeling off the beneficiaries of the Government’s existing refugee scheme. “These numbers are completely unprecedented and I’ll take no lectures from her about heartlessness,” she snapped. Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.