2021-02-24
During Mrs May's tenure, the House of Commons became the house of chaos as opposing factions seemingly bent every rule in the book and every convention in Parliament in a futile bid to overturn the verdict of the People without taking the blame for so doing. The squabbling and scheming reached epic levels and the cartoonists (to misapply a quote from Harold Macmillan) had "never had it so good".
Contrast that with the current state of play where Boris and Matt get by without bothering to present their diktats in the House, Her Majesty's loyal opposition is so loyal that it only ever argues for the restrictions to be tighter, and with very few honourable exceptions no serious attempt is made to do anything other than tow the party line and support the government.
In this article for Brexit Watch Ian Logan points up the situation over Brexit where being economical with the actualité over the Northern Ireland protocol in the House is accepted as merely par for the course.
But as he also points up, what about misleading the people?
Well, to slightly update an old quote from Peters Sellers in MP speech-making mode:
"What about the people indeed, Sir!"
