There’s nothing like the presence of a genuine celeb in the visitors’ gallery to make sure everyone is on their best behaviour for prime minister’s questions.
Quite what Amal Clooney was doing there in parliament or what she made of it all was less obvious. From time to time she flashed a bemused A-list smile but mostly remained A-list inscrutable, before dashing off suitably A-list early after 20 minutes.
The out-of-touch had come face to face but their two worlds were still a long way from colliding with each other. Or with the real world. Just yards away in the central lobby disability campaigners were protesting against benefit cuts, without anyone in the chamber noticing.
Amal wasn’t the only one with other things on her mind. David Cameron was about to head off to the EU summit in Brussels – though not before snatching a quick selfie with Amal (mwah, mwah, “you were wonderful, Amal”, “who is this man?”) – where he was hoping to secure at least the glimmer of a concession from the French and the Germans. Which might also explain why the prime minister suddenly found himself overwhelmed with love for all things Gallic.
There’s been chaos at Calais at some point in every year for the last half century or so. Let’s face it, the French are a lot better at organising a decent strike than we Brits. Yet every time it happens politicians tend to act as if it is the last thing anyone could have realistically expected and use it to score a few cheap points on the uselessness of the French.
Except for Cameron on this one day in June – instead, he went out of his way to say how wonderful the French were at absolutely everything and how blaming the French for deliberately creating a backlog of lorries to make it easier for illegal immigrants to smuggle their way across the Channel was completely unthinkable. Or rather, unsayable. His EU negotiations must be going even worse than he has let on.
If only other parts of the PM’s answers had remained unsaid, this could have been one of his finest hours at the dispatch box. But Dave just can’t help letting himself down, either with the failure of his internal logic – employers have been gagging to get rid of tax credits so they can increase salaries – or by being a sucker for a bad gag.
“You don’t want FFA, full fiscal autonomy,” he sniggered at the SNP’s Angus Robertson, “You want FFS, full fiscal shambles.” FFS! Dave had got FFS into Hansard. High fives and lols all round in Downing Street. Coming next week, WTF. Working Tax Fraud.
Then came a near miracle. Perhaps he was ashamed of the FFS. Perhaps he was bewitched by the inscrutable A-list Clooney eyes. Perhaps visions of Angela Merkel and François Hollande passed across his mind.
Only Dave knows which, but he inexplicably not only answered a question directly but reversed government policy. On Monday, Iain Duncan Smith had told the Commons he had no intention of complying with the information commissioner’s request for figures on numbers of people who have died while waiting for benefits.
Now, in answer to exactly the same question from Labour’s Marie Rimmer, Dave said. “Yes, of course. The government couldn’t think of anything it would like to do more.”
IDS wasn’t in the chamber to witness his humiliation, so there was a brief moment of silence as the Commons waited for the sound of a pistol shot coming from the work and pensions department. None came. But it’s surely only a matter of time.
Dave had loved the French and now he had loved the less fortunate and the disabled. So much so that he had to barge past their wheelchairs to get to his date with Amal. Their three different worlds had finally collided.
