Lady Morgan looks down upon her departmental questions
Within hours of her introduction to the House of Lords, Nicky Morgan had rebranded her Twitter account as “Baroness Morgan of Cotes”. No faux humility, woman of the people’s government stuff for her ladyship.
From now on, everyone – even friends and family – was to address her by her proper title. She hadn’t compromised everything she had believed in by throwing her lot in with Boris Johnson only for people to carry on calling her “Our Nicky”. It had taken a lot of hard work to get unelected and she was going to make the most of every second.
There was, though, the intriguing question of how the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport proposed to face departmental questions when she had now disbarred herself from entering the Commons chamber. It wasn’t long before we got our answer.
Rising to take the first question, junior minister Matt Warman was quick to extol the many virtues of his boss. She had served her Loughborough constituents with distinction by telling them she was standing down as an MP because she wanted to spend more time with her family, only to wing her way straight back into the cabinet. So he asked the whole house to congratulate Morgan on her elevation to the Lords. And as a special treat, Baroness Morgan of Cotes would shortly be arriving in the peers’ gallery to keep a benign eye on proceedings.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Morgan appeared through a side door, looking only mildly put out that there had been no trumpet fanfare to greet her. But she was determined not to make a big deal of it on this occasion, so she fixed a smile and took a seat in the front of the gallery from which she could bestow her blessings on the little people below. Her ministerial team of Warman, Helen Whately and Nigel Adams looked up to give her a little wave of acknowledgment. It was so encouraging to know that Nicky was always prepared to go that extra mile for them.
To add to the sense of the surreal, no one on the Labour benches thought there was anything odd about the occasion. You’d have thought Morgan’s absence would have given Labour its first feelgood session of the new parliament. And God knows these are going to be in short supply. A chance for every MP to get up and take the piss out of the government for not having the secretary of state at the dispatch box.
But apparently not. Morgan repositioning herself six metres above the chamber was so normal as not to be worthy of a single mention. Rather her lack of accountability was definitive proof of a fully functioning democracy. Even when the three junior ministers didn’t have a clue who was supposed to be answering a question – CLUE: it was meant to be one for her ladyship – not one Labour MP said a word. Instead, they all just lowered their eyes and tried to ignore the embarrassment on the government frontbench.
The only MP to express any disquiet about the novelty of the arrangements was the SNP’s John Nicolson and he was rewarded with a few angry stares. How dare he mention the thing that couldn’t be mentioned. You could almost have thought that it was most MPs’ secret ambition to end up in the Lords. The Commons is just a staging post on the way to the main prize.
Emboldened by the normalisation of the bizarre, Adams, Whately and Warman started openly playing to Morgan in the gallery. Trying to catch her eye and looking for reassurance that they hadn’t inadvertently said the wrong thing and would find themselves on the naughty step. It was all they could do not to refer to her as ‘Mummy’. That would have to remain their secret.
When the Speaker called time on the session, Morgan gave her subjects a nod of approval. None of them had said anything of any interest or even given any hint of synaptic connection. Which was just the way she liked it and why she valued them so highly. She must remember to invite them to lunch sometime. If she could fit them in. Baroness Morgan of Cotes retired from the gallery, followed at a respectful distance by two members of her retinue. It had been an exhausting 45 minutes. Her ermine chaise-longue awaited her.
Democracy – or the lack of it – was also on the menu at attorney general questions. The very capable Nick Thomas-Symonds, one of the few genuine, breakout stars of Labour’s shadow cabinet and more than capable of going mano a mano with Geoffrey Cox, was curious for more details on what revenge Boris Johnson planned to take on the judiciary for having dared to rule against the government on prorogation.
“Heaven forbid,” Cox boomed in his familiar soothing baritone. The very idea that Boris could do such a thing was unthinkable. Any changes to the supreme court would only be to make the government yet more accountable to the law. Even an old courtroom pro like Cox, who has years of experience presenting dodgy defences, didn’t sound convinced. Watch this space.
Cox was rather more reassuring in his insistence that the UK would still sign up to the European convention on human rights. “How disappointing,” hissed Tory Desmond Swayne. What was the point of leaving the EU if the UK didn’t get the chance to commit some decent human rights abuses? Even in victory, there’s nothing some Brexiters like more than nursing a grievance.
