As Parliament resumes today, Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle returns to a thorny issue in his inbox: should Jeremy Corbyn have special privileges at Prime Minister’s Questions now he is launching his own party?
Yes, he and co-leader Zarah Sultana have yet to decide on a name for their hard-Left outfit – ‘Your Party’ is a working title only – but they won’t be short of MPs, as up to seven are expected to defect to their ranks.
Reform UK, by comparison, has just four MPs, and the Speaker gives its leader, Nigel Farage, the chance to put one question to Sir Keir Starmer about once every eight weeks. We shall see if Jezza fares any better.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is now launching his own party
In the meantime, one of the first events in the Commons today will be Sultana’s ceremonial crossing of the floor, leaving the Labour benches to sit with fellow exile Corbyn as an Independent. Cue a dash for the exit by Starmerite MPs whose ears will be ringing with Sultana’s stinging denunciation.
‘The Labour Party is dead,’ she has said, explaining her decision to jump ship.
‘It has destroyed its principles and its popularity. Some Labour MPs who consider themselves on the Left are still clinging to its corpse.’ Is she right?
Olympian Sharron Davies, set to be elevated to the Lords by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, gives an insight into what we can expect from her. ‘You cannot have a British government saying illegal foreign immigrants are the first legal priority over tax-paying British people,’ she says. ‘As a government you are now officially working against the electorate.’ More please, Baroness Davies.
Nigel Farage’s barn-storming speech last week, in which he pledged that all illegal migrants would be housed in internment camps, sounded familiar. Ann Widdecombe, as shadow home secretary in 1999, told the Tory conference: ‘All asylum seekers will be housed in secure reception centres until their claims are processed.’ Widders was an early high-profile defection from the Tories to Reform. Give that woman a promotion, Nigel.
You would not know it was a barn-storming speech from the BBC iPlayer coverage. Nigel Farage was shown for just 40 seconds. Still, there were plenty of critics lined up to say why the policy would not work. Same old Lefty Auntie.
Things could get lively at the Hereford Military History Festival this month, held in hometown of the SAS. Speakers include Starmerite human-rights agitator Philippe Sands. Given the threat of prosecution to Northern Ireland veterans from Lefty lawyers of Sands’ ilk, organisers might want to conduct on-the-door checks for rotten eggs.
Now that is intrusive security…
Allegations of sexist behaviour are nothing new at Westminster, but this has to be a first. MPs are complaining that the latest security entrance and exit turnstiles in Parliament’s New Palace Yard are behaving disrespectfully to female colleagues. ‘The damn things revolve so quickly that women say they get a rude smack on the derriere as they go through,’ said one MP.
