QUENTIN LETTS: Miriam Cates is accused of besmirching a body that’s now a byword for cupidity, dimness and hypocrisy. And I say that with pride!

The standards commissioner’s black spot has settled on yet another Conservative. This time the accused is Miriam Cates, refreshingly disobedient MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.

Mrs Cates has in recent months tilted against such establishment shibboleths as the European Convention on Human Rights, cultural Marxism and transgenderism. She is also – there is no way of breaking this lightly – a churchgoer. Is there no end to the woman’s deviance? Mrs Cates is the sort of politician the BBC describes as ‘far-Right’. They were throwing that one at Rishi Sunak at the weekend. Far-Right Rishi! If only he were.

It was announced yesterday that the fair Miriam was ‘under investigation’ by the standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg.

Her alleged sin was undisclosed, though on Westminster’s Press corridor (river of truths) it was rumoured to be her attendance at a party during lockdown.

A similar event, or even the same event – details, as I say, were undisclosed by Comrade Greenberg, who likes to play things close to his chest – was attended by other Tory MPs including the deputy speaker, Dame Eleanor Laing, and the dashing amateur nudist Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich & N Essex). The police peered into the matter and concluded it was a fuss over nothing. But not for Commissioner Greenberg.

It was announced yesterday that the fair Miriam was ‘under investigation’ by the standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg

Westminster’s very own Dogberry is accusing Mrs Cates of this: that she did commit (and at this point I ask you to imagine the voice of the judge in the opening credits of TV’s Porridge) ‘actions causing significant damage to the reputation of the House as a whole, or of its Members generally’.

Pour me a triple Dewar’s, Petunia. To damage the reputation of that foetid factory, that miasmic sump of toads and pongers, the Commons?

Mrs Cates is suspected of besmirching a body that, roughly since the reign of good King Henry III (1216-1272), has been a national byword for cupidity, dimness and pompous hypocrisy. I say that, in all seriousness, with pride. For centuries one of the best things about being English, and later British, was that we cheerfully pelted verbal cabbages at our parliament. We did so because the Commons was ours. It belonged to the people, not to any jumped-up complaints and grievances lawyer.

Mrs Cates, who becomes the eighth Rightie on Commissioner’s Greenberg’s radar (versus zero Lefties), was unable to talk about her difficulty. MPs under investigation by the great sleuth ‘are barred from discussing the allegations’.

If they do so, as Mr Sunak once discovered, they are breaking another of the Commissioner’s rules. Eh? Why? How? One of the tenets of our democracy used to be that MPs could say what they wished. If an accused can not talk about it, how can they tell their electors that the allegation is true or false, borderline or vexatious, or even (impossible to envisage though this naturally be may) the result of some crazed commissioner who thinks he is the new Lootenant Columbo? Columbo, mind you, has a spotless record.

Mrs Cates has in recent months tilted against such establishment shibboleths as the European Convention on Human Rights, cultural Marxism and transgenderism

Her alleged sin was undisclosed, though on Westminster’s Press corridor (river of truths) it was rumoured to be her attendance at a party during lockdown

Westminster’s very own Dogberry is accusing Mrs Cates of ‘actions causing significant damage to the reputation of the House as a whole, or of its Members generally’

This can not be said of Dogberry Daniel. One former Tory MP, David Warburton, was driven from office during a Greenberg investigation but was later told he had won an appeal against the commissioner’s ruling. By then, however, he had quit, for no reason as it turned out. The Government took a hit on a false prospectus. If that happened to Columbo, the Lootenant would be demoted to precinct beat officer.

As for damaging parliament’s blessed reputation, I put a head into the Commons chamber. Jo Churchill, the new employment minister, was dribbling on about getting the unemployed into jobs.

She talked of ‘suites of measures supporting customers on their journey to work’. Someone mentioned ‘wraparound support for those who need an upgrade to their skills base’. Others droned on about ‘outcomes’ and ‘upskilling’.

They could have been speaking Swahili. Spectators in the public gallery gawped and yawned. The disconnection? Total. If that Greenberg bloke is really worried about democracy, that’s where he should start.

Source: Read Full Article