Throughout parliamentary history, certain callings together of the two Houses have been so dreadful at doing the job for which they were assembled that they earned nicknames: the Mad Parliament of 1258, the Bad Parliament of 1376, the Parliament of Dunces of 1404, the Useless Parliament of 1625.
Watching the House of Commons today, though many of those epithets came to mind, it occurred to me that it might be time to give this gathering a name.
Advertisement
This current set of MPs are finding their feet, yet already a clear trope is emerging.
This is the Parliament of Anti-scrutiny. A Parliament so far up its own bottom that none of its words mean anything any more.
It is the Say-Nothing Parliament, the Jargon Parliament, the Parliament of Toads. There is the illusion of activity, while nothing of substance happens.
Today saw a parliamentary debate about that great pressing international crisis: regulating ticket resales.
Playground scrap
Practical solutions are generally thin on the ground, but there’s nothing that can’t be solved with a strategic review, a new regional hub, or better yet, a “mission-board”.
This is government overreach repackaged for the age of the corporate ice-breaker: LinkedIn Stalinism.
Meanwhile, the standard of debate increasingly sounds as if a management consultancy had arranged a playground scrap: “My dad’s bigger than your dad, by McKinsey.”
Often this wholesale slaughter of good sense takes the form of a non-answer; eg “I will take no lectures from the Tories because of [insert horror here]”.
Of course, the Tories were often just as guilty of blaming “the last Labour government” for their self-inflicted woes.
But alongside this predictable line, MPs are perfecting a form of hitherto unparalleled gibberish in the Commons.
Today came a masterclass of the genre, courtesy of Georgia Gould who, though only recently elected, has already been catapulted into the ministerial ranks – to the chagrin of some more weather-beaten colleagues.
But Gould, the daughter of Tony Blair’s pollster, is what passes for royalty in Labour. Thank goodness these brave fighters against privilege have booted out all the Dukes and Earls, eh readers?
Lib Dem Sarah Dyke asked a really very simple question about supporting businesses in the South West.
Eschewing specifics, Gould launched a tidal wave of word vomit.
Growth, she said, was one of “driving missions of this government” and that “work was going on across government to support economic growth and investment”.
The Government, she added, would soon be “consulting on a new national procurement statement to set out their expectations around mission delivery and social value”.
Well glad we’ve cleared that one up. She might as well have given her speech in Icelandic. Or Wingdings.
Party chairman Ellie Reeves (whose sister, husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law were all MPs before her) bemoaned cronyism in politics.
An MP who struggled to read off her prompt-card complained that the House of Lords wasn’t reflective enough of regions.
Cabinet minister Nick Thomas-Symonds agreed that hereditary privilege had no place in public life, while Gould Junior and Reeves Minor nodded along beside him and the Blob Dauphin Liam Conlon, son of Sue Gray and recipient of a five-figure Lord Alli donation, geared up to make his maiden speech.
Perhaps that might be this gathering’s ultimate epithet: “The Parliament Where Irony Died.”
At Business Questions, Munira Wilson wondered why only five hours of parliamentary time had been allocated for such a serious moral debate as the assisted dying Bill.
In lieu of an answer came a stream of waffle, courtesy of Commons Leader and long term sense-vacuum, Lucy Powell. Wilson was reduced to mouthing “five hours!” in despair.
Faced with this lot running the country for the length of this Pygmy Parliament, we might well have to join her and mouth “five years” as its members set fire to everything in sight.