Justin Tomlinson scurried into the Commons flanked by friendly Tory MPs and adjusted his expression to contrite. He looked round to check that the chamber and the press gallery was nearly empty. Just as he had hoped. The Speaker then invited him to make a personal statement.
“I wish to make an unreserved apology,” he mumbled. “I completely accept the committee’s report and I am truly sorry. My only mistake, though, was one of naivety. Everything I did was designed to strengthen regulations into payday lending and was not motivated by financial gain. All I can say is that I am so, so sorry.”
Having done the full three-minute Uriah Heep, the Conservative former benefits minister scuttled straight back out of the House, still surrounded by loyal friends, patting his shoulder and feeling his pain.
All their old mucker had done was to leak a draft of a public accounts committee report on the credit industry to someone he knew who worked for payday lender Wonga. And when his mate emailed four suggested amendments back, he had forwarded them virtually word for word on to the committee as if they were his own. As you do. It had just been a silly, silly little mistake. Hardly worth bothering with. Nothing to see here, move along. As Tomlinson just had. The poor man had been punished enough by being asked to give a statement and serve a two-day suspension. Saturday and Sunday should cover it.
At times like these, it’s noticeable how much more forgiving MPs sometimes are of each other’s shortcomings than they are of anyone else’s. One small misstep and a career can be in tatters. “I’d like to offer my personal thanks to Rona Fairhead, who has stepped down as chair of the BBC Trust,” said the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, sounding anything but grateful in a later statement on the BBC. That’s “stepped down” as in being given the choice to jump before being pushed.
Three more times Bradley went out of her way to pay tribute to Fairhead – it was almost like a Pavlovian response whenever she had forgotten what else she was meant to be saying – without ever bothering to list a single of her achievements. Perhaps she couldn’t think of any. Rona hadn’t been brilliant at her job, but she hadn’t been that bad either.
Fairhead’s real crime was that the prime minister had decided her face no longer fitted – too cozy with Dave – and what Theresa wants, Theresa gets. Out of sight, out of mind. Bradley was merely a high-paid functionary keeping her boss sweet. When the BBC is forced to reveal who earns more than £150K, it might care to point out that the not-very-talented culture secretary is on £141.5K. It will make some of the Beeb’s stars look like a bargain.
Still, at least there was an honesty to Bradley’s artless dismissal of Fairhead. For the very highest levels of parliamentary self-forgiveness, we had to wait for the business and energy secretary, Greg Clark, to give his statement on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. Having originally delayed the decision to proceed back in July in order to double-check both the security implications and the cost, Clark was happy to pronounce that, thanks to his and the chancellor’s incisive eye for detail – Philip Hammond was by his side to nod vigorously at this – the country now had the best deal ever.
The fact that he had neither negotiated a drop in the price nor any extra security safeguards, as the ones in place were already sufficient, was irrelevant. He and the government had just done Britain a massive favour. By looking the French and the Chinese in the eye and blinking.
“The British people will not have to pay a penny until and unless the power station is built,” he declared. The “unless” was a curious choice of word for a minister claiming to have safeguarded Britain’s electricity supply for the next 60 years. “And the fact that consumers will pay up to £30bn over the odds if the power station is built is only fair because the project is bound to overrun and it wouldn’t be right to expect the French and the Chinese to take the hit.”
Several MPs pointed out that the FT, the Economist and the National Audit Office had all described the deal as dreadful for consumers. Clark merely smiled. The people would come to see what a great deal it was in 2025. And if they didn’t, so much time would have passed no one would remember he was the one to blame. Least of all him. In fact, he’d forgiven himself and forgotten already.
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