Biggest vote turner at present? Small boats. That explains the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform. Yesterday Yvette Cooper arrived at the home affairs select committee for what was expected to be a showdown.
She was set to be interrogated about ‘the work of the Home Office’. MPs were bound to go big on the small boats crisis. Weren’t they?
Not this lot. It was an hour and a half before the matter was raised and it received just ten minutes. Questions during that low-energy period were reserved for Starmerites. Owing to the result of the General Election, select committees are heavily dominated by Labour.
The MP given most of the questions was Chris Murray (Lab, Edinburgh East & Musselburgh).
In addition to being as damp as a frogman’s jockstrap he happens to be the son of Margaret Curran, a sometime Labour MP who is now minister for Net Zero in the House of Lords.
You will not be amazed to learn that wee Murray displayed all the feral aggression of a Portobello tea-shop waitress.
He marvelled at Ms Cooper’s command of the crisis. She could not have been handling it better, Mr Murray plainly felt.
‘And will ye be taking another pink dainty cake, madam?’ he did not quite ask the Home Secretary.
Yesterday Yvette Cooper arrived at the home affairs select committee for what was expected to be a showdown
Owing to the result of the General Election, select committees are heavily dominated by Labour
Yvette Cooper arrives in Downing Street to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting in London on June 3
Mr Murray’s cosy family connections were trumped by those of another Labour MP. Jake Richards (Rother Valley) disclosed that his sister is Ms Cooper’s chief of staff.
Their father is Steve Richards, a Blairite columnist and BBC type. Nor does it stop there. Jake’s sister is married to another Labour MP, the implausibly tanned Gregor Poynton (Livingston), who himself was previously married to an ex-Labour MP, Gemma Doyle.
The People’s Party outdoes the Borgias for nepotism. It makes the Pakenhams look grindingly meritocratic.
All this helped Ms Cooper. She could jabber away without significant interruption, wobbling her head and affecting artful concern about the Liverpool parade crash, youth terrorism and other matters.
Sitting some three yards to her left, at shoulder level, one was offered an unusual angle of the Home Secretary.
Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips. She is an efficient, prating machine.
The brow corrugates. The hands chop and push imaginary obstacles on the desk in front of her. The larynx aims for a low, almost masculine note. There are many emphatic nods.
It all feels so formulaic that it conveys… nothing. No novelty or spontaneity. No flashes of humanity. Just a programmed product. Although in some ways impressive, it has a bleakness to it.
Watching her side-on, I could see a stillness in her pupils and sense the cogs of her brain engaging before screeds of policy exposition were squirted past two primly drawn lips
She wore no wristwatch. Two of her tiny fingertips were smudged by ink. Beside her sat her new permanent secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo.
In previous positions, Dame Antonia has been a flashy customer, all Jackie O glasses and shaken tresses, bringing a whiff of ocean air and Roger et Gallet scent to any room.
Now that she is working for Ms Cooper, Dame Antonia has gone conventual. She has abjured glamour. Said not a single word. She just gazed at her ministerial mistress with ostensible interest. Can the unquenchable Romeo really have been tamed?
Shaun Davies (Lab, Telford), a blowy sort, apologetically asked if we might have more success in discouraging small-boat arrivals if we diluted European human-rights conventions.
Ms Cooper shrugged that one off without effort. We did not want to upset the French and Germans.
The committee’s chairman, Dame Karen Bradley (Con, Staffordshire Moorlands) caught a few midges in her sagging jaw.
Robbie Moore (Con, Keighley & Ilkley) scored a few runs by pestering Ms Cooper about grooming gangs. Paul Kohler (Lib Dem, Wimbledon) blew his nose in a vast red hanky and admired his long fingers. Peculiar.
And in the Commons chamber there was discussion about drinking water being tainted by sewage, and one of the questions came from an MP called Mr Swallow.