If you want to reacquaint yourself with just how unspeakably stupid and pompously out of touch MPs are, you could do a lot worse than tune into yesterday’s Observer article by Tory MP Amber Rudd about how PMQs is central to our democracy ha-ha.
Ms Rudd insists that ‘It is essential that the House of Commons allows backbenchers and opposition spokesmen and women to really probe government ministers’. I agree with her 100%, but what TF makes her think that PMQs is in any way whatsoever the medium for so doing? Only one question there in the last two years – asked by Tom Watson about paedophile rings leading back to a Thatcher Cabinet – has caused even the slightest discomfiture to the Executive. That isn’t much of a hit-rate.
She herself admits that, most Wednesdays it is ‘rowdy, silly and loud’ – a description that put me in mind of a legal firm composed entirely of former Bullingdon Club members: “Rowdie, Sealy & Lowde – defending the indefensible for over forty years”. The weekly PMQ session is all those things, but above all it is just one word: embarrassing. The Slog suspects that Rusbridger and his funny mates ran the piece for one reason, based on the rope/hang yourself principle.
Meanwhile, the man usually at the centre of this knockabout farce has once again opened his injudicious mouth too soon. This time, it involves his Jean-Claude Juncker moment. David Cameron’s determination to block the Luxembourg Radio DJ’s bid for the EU Presidency has turned into a hostage to fortune, as Jean-Claude seems to be on his way to becoming the new European Commission (EC) president regardless.
Cameron is of course a silly tit who reads almost every situation badly, but I suspect he is rather more worried tonight about the 54 company bosses who signed a letter in the Times (where else?) demanding the Conservative leader put the City at the heart of his plans for a renegotiation of terms with the EU. These multinational suits don’t care a monkey’s about illiberal EU illegality…just so long as the City is allowed to continue on its course of liberally illegal and unregulated behaviour.
Deciding between the motives of the City and the EC is a bit like making a forced choice between Anthrax and the Ecoli virus: the only satisfactory outcome would be for them to wipe each other out. Anyway, Cameron is set to meet with Herman van Rompuy, so the Belgian chocolate soldier can spout Japanese doggerel at Dave, and Dave can tell Herman that our longterm economic plan is working. That should sort it.
Last night at The Slog: A Song for England
The Slog 