I blame Bercow. The Speaker has introduced a strange new custom to the Commons. He likes to point out his guests in the public gallery and to encourage MPs to join him in saluting them. Now everyone’s at it. Before today’s session Jeremy Corbyn had bagged himself an imam from a north London mosque and installed him in the upstairs pews. He duly greeted the cleric as ‘my friend’ and got his name right at the second attempt.
Today the NHS was on Mr Corbyn’s mind. Mrs May’s austerity U-turn, and her transformation into Lady Bountiful, has converted Mr Corbyn into a raving Thatcherite. He fumed about new NHS funding. ‘Which taxes are going up?’ he demanded. ‘And for who?’. Under a government led by him the answers to those questions would be, ‘all of them’ and ‘for everyone.’
Ronnie Cowan asked an urgent question about medicinal cannabis and Mrs May gave a ploddingly earnest reply.
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