Shortly after 9.30am, the green benches were almost half full. For a minute’s silence to remember the 80th anniversary of the first public declaration of the Holocaust by the then foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, in the Commons. It was a powerful and moving moment. The Commons is often at its best when it says nothing at all.
Then, just as quickly as they had appeared, nearly all the MPs vanished into the ether. They had either done their bit for the day and were taking the opportunity to nip off home early for Christmas or were staging their own strike. Hell, many workers elsewhere in the country were taking industrial action, so why shouldn’t MPs? After all it’s been a hell of a year, what with the three prime ministers. Each, in their own way, worse than the last. Who wouldn’t want to be better paid for dealing with all that crap?
Some might have even chosen to join the nurses – starting their first strike in more than 100 years – on the picket line. Take the Tory MP and chair of the northern research group, Jake Berry. He’s struggled to find any government policy with which he agrees.
First he took exception to Rishi Sunak’s opposition to onshore windfarms. Now he’s broken cover to argue that the government needs to substantially raise its 4-5% pay offer to the nurses to break the deadlock. It was quite straightforward he said. Nurses had taken a real-terms pay cut since 2010, increasing numbers were using food banks to get by, and there were huge problems over patient safety and staff retention and recruitment.
It was time to stop the grandstanding. The government did not look strong by standing up to the Royal College of Nursing: the least militant union you could find and which had the overwhelming support of most people. Rather it made Sunak look weak and increasingly out of touch. It was like this. No one took the pay review board’s findings as definitive; apart from the prime minister.
Rather it was just a negotiation. The nurses wanted 19%, the government was offering 4% and a compromise could be found somewhere in the middle. Duh. It wasn’t complicated. By lunchtime, a second Tory MP, Dan Poulter, had also backed the nurses. They needed more money and the government should stop being so stubborn. After all, we know that’s how this dispute is going to play out in the end. So we might as well cut to the chase.
There’s a feeling that even the government knows this, but has backed itself into a corner and can’t work out how best to save face. Clue: it can’t. How else do you explain its decision to send out the truly hopeless junior health minister Maria Caulfield to do the morning media round on the day the RCN was striking.
Just about the only thing Caulfield has going for her is that in a former life she was a nurse. She wasn’t given a particularly hard time by any of her interviewers but she still crashed and burned. Unable to explain the government’s funding model. Unable to explain why the government wasted billions on useless PPE and cannot find £10bn for nurses.
Meanwhile, it’s become increasingly unclear if Boris Johnson is on strike or working. Though it goes without saying he isn’t going anywhere near the Commons. A chap can’t get by on a backbencher’s salary. From the latest register of interests, it appears that Johnson is on a work to rule. Just three overseas trips to deliver poorly conceived speeches that have been knocked out five minutes before he’s due on stage. The rest of the time, he just puts his feet up in the country.
Mind you, Boris has trousered £750k in the last month. But that again is chicken feed. At least that’s the way it looks. He and Carrie own three houses between them and yet he still can’t afford to get on the housing ladder in London. How he must be praying for a property crash. So in the meantime he has to allow Lord Bamford to pay for his accommodation. Boris is Bamford’s Boy. Not-so-Little Boy Lost. It’s a modern morality tale. A tragedy. His kids are in rags. Alas poor Boris! Will no one think of the real victims?
Back in the Commons, the few dozen MPs who had chosen to remain took part in international trade departmental questions. Or the alternate reality as it is increasingly known. Because no minister is ever allowed to admit that Brexit has made things worse. And anyone who even hints that it has is a doom-monger. Talking Britain down.
Instead we are treated to ministers indulging their own fantasies. And for the most part the rest of the Commons lets them get on with it as everyone knows the government is beyond help. So we get Andrew Bowie’s protracted defence of the picked upon UK seed potato. Too good for the rest of the world, so destined to be excluded from trade deals everywhere. We should be proud.
We should also be thrilled that our trade with the EU went up by 18% this year. Making Brexit work. Only we’re not allowed to say that trade fell by about 30% in 2021 due to Covid so we’re still worse off. And Greg Hands couldn’t understand why we weren’t cheering the Australia deal that even Sunak and the Australians had said was a rubbish deal for the UK. “We’ve done £800bn more trade this year because of Brexit,” Hands said. Delusional. The Office for National Statistics puts it at nearer £1bn.
The looking-glass world continued with an urgent question on China, with Tory MPs wondering if we could officially deport consular officials who had already left the country. That’s sticking it to the man. Still, one person was happy. A whole day had passed without any further bullying complaints being made against Dominic “Psycho” Raab. He might even get to the weekend on just eight. A result. Things were looking up.
