A little corner of Austerity Britain – the bars at the House of Commons to be precise – resembled a Bacchanalia last week, if reports are to be believed. “The Souses of Parliament” ran the headline on the column of The People’s veteran political editor Nigel Nelson. He recalls the scenes on night of the Finance Bill debate on July 6 which “looked such a riot of drunkenness that some MPs should have been breathalysed and banned from driving laws through Parliament”.
Other newspapers reported that one Tory MP was too drunk to vote and that another of David Cameron’s troops was so tired and emotional that she was rude to Commons staff. Some of the new MPs are a little bit smarter. I hear reports that some of the new intake, rather than twiddle their thumbs and risk being caught up in the raucous behaviour at Westminster, have embarked on fact-finding missions in the bars and clubs of Soho.
It’s a very different story at the heart of Cameron’s coalition. His tight-knit circle at Downing Street is busily preparing to launch their boss as a world statesman. He’s off to the United States soon and heading off on a trip to at least two other major countries in the other direction. But he faces real trouble at home. His outrider, Education Secretary Michael Gove, hastily cancelled 700 school building schemes last week in a spectacularly botched fashion while his admirers in the right-wing media looked the other way. Instead, Gove’s spinners placed stories about the giant salaries of quangocrats – not exactly the key issue at the school gates where parents are more concerned about leaking classroom roofs.
Despite the chaos at the top, Cameron’s deeper problem lies among his backbenchers and the Liberal Democrat MPs in the lower echelons of his coalition. “All the drinking and bad behaviour was partly down to the frustration among new MPs about how they are simply not involved in government”, says one veteran Tory MP. “They came here thinking they’d change the world, but found all those jobs had been snapped up by Cameron’s inner circle.”
Hardline Tory right-wingers are just biding their time. They confine their unhappiness, for now, to secretive Westminster dining clubs. Those on the left of the Lib Dems are just as disgruntled. Former leader Charles Kennedy is “a big bag of moody broodiness over the whole coalition love-in”, one Lib Dem confides. Others who were not included in the ministerial team are fuelling the simmering resentment.
One can only wonder what will happen when the parliamentary recess starts on July 29. As Cameron’s team are beginning to realise, the devil makes work for idle hands.
Vincent Moss is the political editor of the Sunday Mirror
