There’s a definite fin de siècle feel about Westminster these days reminiscent of the last days of the Major government in 1997.
The Prime Minister, who last weekend got all tough over Johnson’s honours nominations, bottled the debate and vote on the Privileges Committee report, as did another 285 of his MPs. It duly passed but revealed the weakness of Sunak, and the extent, excluding the SNP, of mutual cross-party self-congratulation that permeated Tory and Labour benches.
Westminster operates within the framework of a partially written, uncoded, constitution where it is supreme and as the spectacle of the Privileges Committee Report debate was unfolding Humza Yousaf launched the Scottish Government’s latest independence paper outlining the path to a written constitution in an independent Scotland. We discuss.
We also look at the SNP Special Conference in Dundee this weekend. Is it yet another talking shop where non-allgned Yessers like Lesley are there as “licensed dissenters”? Or will it be an opportunity for SNP members to “take back control”?
Sunak wasn’t the only missing party leader at Westminster, Sir Keir Starmer was in Edinburgh promoting Labour’s Great British Energy Company, to be based in Scotland. Has he outflanked the SNP enough on this to sway Scottish voters?
As the video emerged of the “Jingle to Mingle” party at Tory HQ the first phase of the Covid Inquiry saw excoriating condemnation by Professor Sir Michael Marmot not only of the failure to prepare for the pandemic, but the critical damage done by austerity to the NHS and to the health of the population.
David Cameron, of course, “didn’t accept that description”. Osborne, the other architect of the policy, is up next.
All this plus fitba, and Twitter bans for Joyce.
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