High noon for Starmer at PMQs showdown.
One of the many pleasures of being retired and living in London is the variety of free entertainments on offer. One such, not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, is a seat in the public gallery for Prime Minister’s Question time at the House of Commons. Anyone can apply to their local MP for tickets, but I have had the misfortune of being resident in Beckenham, for years a rotten borough for the Conservative Party. It’s been said of the Labour Party that in the old days, in Red Wall seats, Labour could put up a donkey and it would still be returned with a landslide. The Tories in Beckenham seem to have tested this theory in real time, via their MP for fifteen years, Bob Stewart, an embodiment of the term “Gammon”. Not for him the common courtesy of replying to the emails of his constituents, particularly those with an affiliation to Labour. Of course not. Where would the votes be in that?Bob had resolutely ignored all my emails requesting tickets over the years, so my delight in Labour finally breaking up the one party state of Bromley, had personal significance. Our new MP, Liam Conlon replied immediately, and after a wait of about 8 months, I finally got the nod and was informed that tickets would be available to pick up from the Admissions Order Office in the central lobby on Wednesday February 4th. Little did I know then that this would prove to be one the more significant PMQs, when The Epstein/Mandelson shit finally hit the fan.
It was a fascinating day – I’d recommend it to anyone with any kind of commitment to democracy and any kind of empathy for the idiosyncrasies of the quaint historical British system. Walking up to the Parliament building is like a guided tour of the democratic right to protest. Encamped at the traffic light island at the end of Parliament street was a very familiar face conducting a permanent protest with a cacophonously loud sound system.
The game was partly given away by the banner festooned around the railings of the traffic island: “We’re still here because Brexit is still crap.” Hard to disagree really – Steve Bray, the patron saint of eccentric British protesters, is still the man.
There are other smaller protests dotted around: Gaza, Greenpeace, Global warming etc . Then on to the building itself. Once you’re through fairly strict airport style security with scanners and plastic trays, and you negotiate a winding walkway past the statue of Oliver Cromwell, you enter through the main doors of Westminster Hall, before getting to the central lobby, a place as familiar as a film set, so often does it appear on nightly news bulletins.
The building is magnificent and oozes history. I ended up walking around gawping at the medieval Hammer Beam roof and the statues and paintings and plaques reminding everyone of the famous folk who have trodden the flagstones there.
It’s a long wait to get access to the public gallery, which is at one end of the debating chamber behind a perspex screen. You get a very good view of the Speaker’s chair, and the main players on both sides . The sound is well miked up and the proceedings are broadcast on screens in the gallery itself. I was disappointed that this masks the ghastly Reform UK fascists from view, and I had to content myself with a tv version of Cruella Braverman making her first intervention as a Reformista, to a satisfying chorus of boos.
Speaking of which, it’s made very clear through a series of official notices that you pass on the way to the gallery, that no clapping, shouting, cheering or jeering will be tolerated and throughout the proceedings, several frock-coated officials, probably all with names like Ermine Wolf or Black Hammer, hovered threateningly, glaring at the suitably silent and cowed members of the public.
The fact that the officials all seemed to be Dickensian in age as well as dress, and couldn’t police a determined gang of toddlers, didn’t seem to matter to the crowd, who all behaved impeccably. Unlike the rare protesters pictured above. That was on another occasion sadly.
A few random takeaways from the experience:
1.It’s a very beautiful, interesting, historic building and worth a visit just for that
2. It felt very different from the event I later saw reported in the media. On line, on the TV news programmes and in the press, it was all presented as an occasion of high drama, but in reality, it wasn’t like that at all. It was all very quiet and polite, to the point of being rather tame.
Perhaps this was the distancing effect of being behind the screen. Or perhaps the strange, artificial, performative nature of the whole event. Badenoch, as leader of the opposition, gets to ask 6 questions, but it seems perfectly possible to field those questions in a bland way, and wait until you get one of the series of “dolly drop” questions from your own side. Those questions had the effect of draining away any drama or sense of jeopardy.You know the sort of thing: “Does my honourable friend the PM agree with me that the opening of a new sausage factory is a welcome sign of this Government’s commitment to sausages, meat products in general and to the residents of my constituency, (insert name of town the MP represents but has only lived in for the past 6 months)
3. Although it’s better than nothing, it’s not really a good way of ensuring accountability. The adversarial layout of the chamber doesn’t help and neither does the in-built imperative to produce snappy sound bites for later broadcast. The select committee system provides a much more focused cross examination where it’s harder to get away with not answering the question or not being prepared.
4. The most disturbing thing happened right at the end of the event when we were leaving via the central lobby. It was full of the great and the good, a very familiar scene from countless TV news interviews. We passed Farage and Braverman chatting to two other people. Their conversation finished just as we were passing them, and Farage strode past us on his own wearing a very expensive looking dapper blue suit.
Tanned and confident, he was every inch the wealthy member of the establishment, aware that all eyes turned towards him as he walked along. Westminster Hall was packed with visitors, including loads of Sixth Formers and school parties. Many of these young people, shouted out to Farage. “Nigel! Nigel! This way Nigel!” as if he were a Pop Star. I’ve thought for years now that political education in this country was utterly pathetic, and it’s left at least one generation completely vulnerable to charlatans who are good communicators. Into this vacuum step Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk lying shamelessly, all in the name of “Free Speech”. The young always used to be my hope for the future, being naturally attracted to the idea of social justice. Now I’m not so sure. Social Media has a lot to answer for.
5. The entire population of UK political journalists are having a laugh when they say the Mandelson affair is a worse political scandal than Profumo. I have no time for Starmer, and he will eventually go (probably after the May council election debacle), but all that has happened here is that he’s made a mistake. He’s not in the Epstein files. There’s no suggestion of corruption. There’s plenty of other things to accuse him of. Appalling policy on Gaza. Appalling weaponising of antisemitism against the Corbyn Labour Party. Appalling lies during his own leadership campaign. But in the grand scale of things, it’s small beer really. Have people really forgotten the shameful performance of Boris Johnson? – utterly corrupt, utterly venal, utterly dishonest and utterly unexamined when it comes to leaking state secrets to Russia via secret Bunga Bunga party attendance in Italy.
Later the same day there was an Opposition Day Debate on the whole Mandelson fiasco. Guess who wasn’t there? That’s right, man of the people, Nigel Farage. I wonder why?
We live in dark times and a trip to the Mother of Parliaments has not reassured me that our democracy is safe. Perhaps my next grand day out in that there London should be Madam Tussauds.
The Old Grey Owl 