A session in front of the liaison committee is never the saucy romp it sounds. The name conjures a sense of intrigue; heaving bosoms, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil indulging in “the hurly-burly of the chaise longue”. But this proved no afternoon dalliance – more a semi-circular firing squad, composed of the star chamber of select committee heads.
Ranged behind the PM was a group of what looked like schoolchildren, who had perhaps chosen the wrong day to see Parliament at its dignified best. A Number 10 aide with a delightfully expressive face was also supporting his boss. Like an overly involved soccer mom watching her darling play football, he lived every moment of the PM’s ordeal vicariously – wincing at the awkward parts, tittering at the jokes, occasionally resembling a man having his teeth pulled one by one, sans anaesthetic.
In Bernard Jenkin’s absence, Clive Betts deputised as chairman. Despite the fraught issues ahead of him, he presided over events like a jolly uncle at Christmas – cheerily promising plenty on the “war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis”. Then Betts abruptly handed over to Pete Wishart of the SNP, who homed in on partygate like a heat-seeking missile.
Had the Prime Minister received one of the fixed penalty notices, he enquired, radiating demonic glee.
The PM assumed a faux-chummy facade. “Well, Pete,” he began, “I’m sure you’d know if I were.”
Despite prefacing every answer “With the GREATEST respect”, he carefully avoided surrendering any detail on fixed penalty notices – not until the investigation had concluded and Mars was in retrograde during the second neap tide of the spring equinox, at any rate.
Wishart glowed with the slightly demented look of the nightclub bouncer who enjoys his job just a bit too much. “If you are among them, you’re pretty much toast, aren’t you?”
The SNP’s culture spokesman, a former folk-rock musician, evidently regards himself as Parliament’s answer to Hendrix or Keith Moon, but one who had somehow lived to tell the tale. “I was in rock and roll for 15 years – even I couldn’t compete with the partying at No 10!”
Woodpecker tapping a tree trunk
The PM spluttered. “Hmmmhmmalum”. A chorus of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ punctuated each sentence. After a while it seemed to assume a calming rhythm of its own, like a woodpecker tapping a tree trunk. The No 10 aide shuddered into his notes as the PM hummed and harred, staggering through his replies like a sozzled fresher trying to dance in stilettos.
Soon the baton passed to Tom Tugendhat of the foreign affairs select committee. It would be hard to invent a better dramatic foil to the PM than the MP for Tonbridge and Malling; always posing some fiendishly detailed question designed to trip up the scatty PM, invariably immaculate to his scruffy, the Hal to his Falstaff, even his clipped, patrician vowels contrasted pleasingly with the staccato Boris bark.
Boris produced a characteristically mangled analogy to describe Ukrainian resistance. “The quills of the porcupine have become so stiffened that it is ever after indigestible to Putin,” he honked.
Unpalatable quilled porcupines
Was it not important, asked Tugendhat, to distinguish between ordinary Russians and the Putin regime? “We’ve gotta keep it simple,” said he of the stiffening unpalatable quilled porcupines.
Eventually respite came via riveting questions on fertiliser shortages from Neil Parish of Tiverton and Honiton. “Farmers want to produce more food. What can we do to help them?” he implored, in his enchanting West Country lilt.
The PM – though no stranger to fertilisation – looked momentarily baffled but soon rallied. “I want to spread the good stuff across the fields of this country as passionately as anybody,” he ejaculated. (Author! Author!)
It was certainly the closest thing to a liaison that day. Eventually Clive Betts managed to move the conversation on to nuclear power stations, and the PM’s ordeal sputtered to an end.
