Parliamentarian of the week was a Labour hereditary, Lord Berkeley, who on Monday creaked to his feet to ask about Whitehall’s ‘farming road map’.
Some ministerial non-entity had said this road map would ‘deliver a thriving farming sector’ for the next 25 years.
The 18th Baron Berkeley, 85: ‘Why is it called a road map?’ The question earned laughter from some quarters but dirty looks from others, who thought he was being facetiously unhelpful to the ruling caste.
The ministerial non-entity froze. Didn’t know what to say. She eventually whinnied ‘answers on a postcard please’.
Our political class is hated. Why? The answer lies partly in that rural ‘road map’. Our rulers have turned the English language into mush.
Farming is not the only road map. There is a gov.uk road map, a nuclear road map, a transforming infrastructure performance road map, a digital and data road map, a research and development road map, a natural capital road map, a cybersecurity licensing road map and a design for life road map.
Some road maps have their own ‘task forces’, creating dead metaphors within dead metaphors.
The Commons yesterday opened with business minister Gareth Thomas announcing ‘a series of roadshows’ to increase exports.
The Commons yesterday opened with business minister Gareth Thomas announcing ‘a series of roadshows’ to increase exports
Business minister Gareth Thomas speaking to MPs in the House of Commons
Roadshow is a cousin of road map. Officials mint these expressions in the hope of making some drab initiative sound whizzo. Any glamour once associated from Radio One roadshows in the 1970s has long faded. ‘Roadshow’ is now stale. It tickles no interest.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Lab, Bathgate & Linlithgow) said she had held a ‘business roundtable’ in her constituency. Did we instantly picture some gathering of chivalrous souls, as it was in the olden days of King Arthur’s round table? No.
Roundtable is another expression that has become as worn as an autumn flip-flop. Mr Thomas dutifully echoed the phrase, evincing no joy. He stood at a slight stoop, his voice flat.
Poor Gareth has been in the Commons since 1997 and is no fool. He was a minister of state (middle-ranking position) in Gordon Brown’s government; 15 years later he is merely an under-secretary (junior position) in the same department.
Quiet humiliation has been swallowed with pitiful gratitude. So it was that, after half a lifetime in the Commons, he found himself on a sunny May Day morn at the despatch box spouting civil service-ese.
Why not resist? Why not rip up that briefing note and write something more interesting? But that would be dangerous.
The Blob would mark you down as a free-thinker. And so Mr Thomas spoke, in the same lifeless tone, about the government’s coming ‘re-set’ with the European Union.
Re-set: the metaphor once crackled with life, stirring associations of broken shin bones being painfully realigned. But the Starmerites have said ‘re-set’ so often that it no longer creates energy. The reason they say it is that they want to be opaque.
Starmerites have said ‘re-set’ so often that it no longer creates energy. The reason they say it is that they want to be opaque
They do not want us becoming too curious about their negotiations with Brussels.
Mr Thomas, in the same energised tone, moved on to ‘banking hubs’ and ‘growth hubs’. Any decent secretary of state should ban his or her department from naming anything a ‘hub’.
Energy minister Sarah Jones, another 2nd XI player, was soon saying that ‘our industrial strategy has identified eight key growth-driving sectors that will be the arrowhead of our economic success.’
That ‘arrowhead’, in different hands, could have worked. But she read it listlessly. The words just merged like flakes of Ready Brek in a sea of skimmed milk.
Further dull-isms followed: guidelines, datasets, frameworks, drivers, toolkits. A cemetery of cliches.
Final thing to report is that in the Lords, Labour backbenchers made rumbling noises about the Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose chairman, Lady Falkner (Crossbencher), was swift to accept the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on trans rights.
Lefties are furious with her. Complaints were led yesterday by a smouldering Lady Levitt. Who she? Sir Keir Starmer’s ex-sidekick at the crown prosecution service. Piccolo mondo. Lady Falkner has shown independence of mind. She won’t last.
