Monday
The chancellor appeared before the Treasury select committee to explain the details of his autumn statement and was visibly peeved when it was pointed out that the extra distributional analysis he had provided showed that the bottom three deciles of the population were going to be made much worse off.
“I expect you to deal with this information in a mature matter,” Philip Hammond said. In other words, the government had been elected on a manifesto of making the poor poorer so he shouldn’t be pilloried for keeping that promise.
Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg was more keen to point out that he hadn’t personally benefited from one of the chancellor’s budgetary measures. Though Rees-Mogg was absolutely delighted Hammond had decided to give £7.6m for the repair of the stately pile, Wentworth Woodhouse, he wanted it on record that the chancellor’s decision had nothing to do with the fact that it was the home in which his mother-in-law had grown up. Duly noted.
Tuesday
As someone who doesn’t drink, not only do I increasingly seem to find myself in bad company – Ben Wright’s excellent book, Order! Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking reveals that Donald “I don’t even have the excuse of being pissed” Trump is teetotal – I also find the Christmas period tends to drag. I’ll go a long way to avoid going to parties. Preferably home. But there are exceptions. A close friend who has just discovered he has terminal brain cancer has decided that the best way to cope with the situation is to throw an impromptu party this weekend. He’s also insisted that dancing will be obligatory and promised one or two surprises. I’m fairly confident I would not have reacted to such terrible news with such style, but wild horses wouldn’t keep me away. I’m just not sure whether I’ll be laughing or crying. Both probably.
Wednesday
Christmas is the time of peace, goodwill and a chance to give your colleagues a good kicking. You’d have thought that Michael Gove might have had enough of Boris bashing for one year, but he couldn’t resist one last dig at one of Westminster’s many festive parties by laughing about Boris’s undiplomatic relations with the Saudis. Maybe Gove was just following orders, for Theresa May also seems to have declared war on the foreign secretary.
When asked if FO had originally been intended as an instruction rather than destination for Boris, she replied that Boris was FFS. “That’s fine foreign secretary,” she claimed unconvincingly. For fine sake. Still, at least Boris got his own back by describing her trousers as “lederhosen”. The Labour party has a more fraternal way of dealing with the festivities: they just avoid each other. Dozens of tickets for the normally rammed annual dinner of the parliamentary Labour party were still on sale minutes before it was due to start.
Thursday
You’d have thought that some stories, such as child abuse, go well beyond party politics. Not for Labour’s Dennis Skinner. At culture, media and sport questions he said: “When the government are digging into this, they should remember that there is a class argument about it. It is about people making money, and the Tories know a lot about that.” Wrong on so many counts. Turning paedophilia into class warfare could be just one of the reasons a struggling Tory party is still 15 points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls.
Friday
It may have been the perfect metaphor for Britain’s isolation in the EU, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the PM as she was blanked by her opposite numbers at the EU council meeting in Brussels. I’ve been that boy who was deliberately ignored and left anxiously fiddling with my cuffs in the school playground and it really isn’t that much fun. You’re never lonelier than when you’re in a crowd. Still, Theresa might take comfort that some MPs were having an even worse night out than her.
The parliamentary Labour party did finally get together for a Christmas bonding session of sorts at a drinks party in a club on the Embankment. The party was meant to start at seven but as most Labour MPs were busy voting on their own opposition day motions until past eight, the place was like a morgue for the first hour or so.
Late on things degenerated still further when the evening turned into a karaoke night. Katy Clark, of Jeremy Corbyn’s office, fumed as Mike Gapes sang Back in the USSR and then flounced out when a group led by Ian Murray sang the Tony Blair anthem Things Can Only Get Better. As one MP said: “We’re nothing if not absolutely, fucking pathetic.”
Digested week, digested: Jeremy Corbyn plans to relaunch himself as Jeremy Corbyn.
