I am getting a bit worried about the Tory chief whip. The first thing he did when he got this job was get stuck in the toilet, and I am afraid to say it has all gone down the pan since then. He has misplaced two members of parliament, he keeps losing votes and this week he presided over the first ever Commons defeat for this government on their own legislation on unfair beer ties. He can not even organise a vote on a brewery.
Light was shed yesterday on the Tory chief whip’s mysterious absence from the Commons every Thursday morning. Apparently, he has written to Tory members of parliament to tell them this government is so out of ideas that they are no longer required in parliament on a Thursday. Forty years ago a previous Tory government introduced the three day week. Only this nostalgia obsessed former secretary of state for education could possibly think of bringing it back.
It seems this zombie government is now actually grinding to a halt. Their legislative programme is threadbare, the House sits for less and less time, they have lost and then ignored a record number of votes. And now the chief whip has told Tory MPs that they do not need to show up at all. This government treats the Commons with contempt.
Just look at what happened with the European arrest warrant. The prime minister stood at the dispatch box and promised the House that we would have a vote on the European arrest warrant before today. They botched the drafting so badly that the regulation got rejected by the joint committee on statutory instruments. They brought a motion to the House which masqueraded as a vote on the European arrest warrant when it was no such thing. And it took yesterday’s Labour opposition day to give this House the debate the prime minister promised us four weeks ago.
So after witnessing this farce, I had a suggestion for the leader of the House. He likes outsourcing, so why doesn’t he just give up and let the opposition handle the rest of the legislative programme in this parliament? There is no question that we will make a better job of it.
There are only two other men in government who came close to the chief whip for having a bad week. The prime minister who has been savaged by Dominic Cummings for having no political priorities whatsoever and being unable to manage his way out of a paper bag. And the chancellor who has been revealed to have put a padlock on his Treasury fridge filled with treats and milk. What would Margaret Thatcher say if she knew that it was the Liberal Democrats who are the milk-snatchers now?
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Angela Eagle is member of parliament for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle
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