The Tory Sir Simon Burns, whose warmly reciprocated contempt for the Speaker is fast assuming mythic status, thought the urgent question John Bercow had granted wasn’t that urgent. Surely urgent questions should be “newsworthy” with people “talking about the issue in the Dog and Duck”?
Burns’s complaint was obviously nonsense. Conversations will be going on at Dogs and Ducks across the country along these lines: “Well, Bert, forget about tax credits. What about David Cameron’s dictatorial purge of the Tory delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe?”
“The Assembly of what, Fred?” “Blimey Bert where have you been? It’s a body of MPs from 47 countries who meet in Strasbourg four times a year and see themselves as extending co-operation throughout Europe.” “Sounds like a gigantic junket to me, Fred.”
“Not so, Bert. It does vital work even if hardly anyone knows what. And Cameron has just sacked three Eurosceptic Tories on it, Sir Edward Leigh, Cheryl Gillan and Christopher Chope. The Speaker granted Chope an urgent Commons question to say how cross he was.”
Chope was indeed cross. With Cameron. “The decision is being interpreted in Strasbourg as interference by government in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly,” he thundered. This “washing of dirty Conservative linen in public”, as the Lib Dem Tom Brake described it, was a joy for the shadow Commons Leader Chris Bryant. “Far be it from me to intrude in the private grief of the Tory party,” he said, before doing so at some length.
The Speaker seemed to be rather enjoying it. Cutting off Sir Simon’s complaint in mid-flow, he said decisions on urgent questions “are not subject to questioning by Members. He has had a go, but I am afraid that he made a bit of a mess of it.” “Very helpful,” Burns exclaimed. If nothing else, a day for ventilating sulphurous hatreds.
