The virtual House of Commons had been open for barely half an hour before its first major scandal broke.
In just the 11 years since the expenses scandal broke, somewhere in the region of £250m has been spent on MPs’ second homes, but only the opening of the virtual House of Commons has laid bare the full scale of the outrage.
Surely not even Chris Grayling’s £50m contract for a ferryless ferry company can represent such shocking value for taxpayer money. For now we have had the misfortune to see inside so many of these homes, we must ask: on what has this money been spent?
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Alright, so there’s a killer virus stalking the deserted streets, the prime minister is recovering from a stay in intensive care, and Labour appears to have decided to become a party of actual functioning opposition again, but all those things notwithstanding, there are nevertheless no bigger questions to ask than why, for example, does Barry Gardiner live in a travel tavern?
Peter Bone, MP for Wellingborough and semi-professional Sven-Goran Eriksson lookalike, is entitled to claim more than £40,000 a year in office and living costs.
And yet, as appeared in terrifying octuplicate on the giant screens installed in the House of Commons gallery, the baffled look on Dominic Raab’s face as he gazed from the despatch box and directly into the looming vortex of Bone’s 48-inch nostrils, seemed to say nothing more than, “Is this man actually in his airing cupboard?”
The new speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, had issued MPs with special instructions to think hard about what might be lurking on the walls behind them as their inexplicably humble homes briefly became part of the mother of parliaments. They were expressly told that whatever could be seen in shot would be meticulously scrutinised by journalists. They were warned not to use the opportunity to make juvenile political points.
For the most part they heeded his warning, apart from the SNP’s Westminster leader, who simply couldn’t help but position himself in front of a large sign reading Hibernian 3 – Rangers 2. Just as crushingly tedious in video form as in the flesh, then.
It may also be of interest to note that this was Sir Keir Starmer’s first outing as Labour leader. Events might not have proceeded exactly how he dreamt them, when he first ran for parliament five years ago. Which is to say, his first major moment as Labour leader would happen in a nine-tenths deserted House of Commons, with hazard tape fastened fastidiously around it. But that pales in comparison, of course, to the near half decade he has spent by Jeremy Corbyn’s side, and emerging somehow relatively untarnished by it.
One legal commentator observed that it was like watching a City solicitor against a top QC, which is exactly what it was. Dominic Raab had no answer for any of Sir Keir’s questions, but where things were suddenly different is that Sir Keir listened to the answers and told him as much. Gone are the days in which a prime minister could confess at the despatch box to having personally kidnapped Shergar and Jeremy Corbyn would just plough straight on with his next shouty non-question about universal credit.
Of course, the real contest will only begin when Boris Johnson returns. There is a long, long way to go until the next election, and even though politics appears to be returning vaguely to normal, one still makes predictions at one’s peril. But all that notwithstanding, it does seem as if the next couple of years or so are not going to be the time for a joker.
And as the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak continues to take gentle steps towards what is beginning to feel like criminal negligence, they may find they would rather not be facing the man who was, until fairly recently, the country’s chief criminal prosecutor.
