Coalition of chaos

I don't blame you for hiding your face, mate - I've been watching the news feeds through my fingers for the past twelve hours.

I'm starting to think that the script team on this season of The End of British Democracy are getting a bit above themselves. It's reminding me of those tea-time soap operas about old ladies in cardigans going to the market in the village and gossiping over their garden fences, that suddenly decide to up the drama by writing in an international terrorist gang who take the vicar hostage and mine the toiletries aisle in the Co-op.

Just dial it back down a bit. Please.

So. During a debate on the Public Order Bill in the Commons yesterday, the Home Secretary, Cruella Braverman, accused the Opposition of being a coalition of chaos and said, “It’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption that we are seeing on our roads today.” Sadly the Labour benches were relatively empty at the time, but those who were there howled with delighted laughter. The Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, could barely speak for laughing as she got to her feet and put Braverman straight.

This afternoon Braverman resigned, ostensibly for having broken Ministerial rules by sharing market-sensitive Government information with outsiders (one of whom shopped her), but in fact because she's so bitterly opposed to the notion of foreigners entering the country that she refused to carry through a directive from the Prime Minister (remember her?) to relax the rules on migrant workers. Her resignation letter was poisonous, and read like a job pitch to the worst elements of her party to give her the Premiership instead. I wouldn't put it past them. 

In entirely related news, Nigella Lawson's recipe of the day today was for Agedashi Tofu.

The new Home Secretary is Grant Shapps. Such is the pass we've come to that I find myself thinking he's probably not the worst choice Truss could have made - though the Westminster rumour mill says that it would have gone to Sajid Javid, if he hadn't forced the PM into a corner where she felt constrained to suspend the spox who told reporters last week that Javid wasn't made Chancellor when Kwarteng was thrown under the nearest bus because she "knows who is good and who is shit". He seems... nice.

Meanwhile, in a naughty but quite funny bit of party politicking, Labour tabled a measure today to ban fracking - which is hugely unpopular in the country and which the Tories themselves pledged in their last election manifesto not to pursue, but which they now want to allow - despite geologists agreeing that we have no suitable shale in the UK, and therefore even if you ignore all the other Bad Things about it, it can never make a meaningful contribution to our energy supplies anyway. Usually on these occasions the Government treats the Opposition vote with the contempt they feel it deserves, and tells its MPs to abstain. But not this administration. Tory whips sent out an email this morning:

The second debate is the main event today and is a 100% hard 3 line whip! /// This is not a motion on fracking. *This is a confidence motion in the Government.*

All day anguished Conservative MPs were howling about the position in which this put them: they could follow the whip and face the wrath of their constituents, or vote with their consciences and get chucked out of the Party. Over the course of the afternoon so many of them said that they would defy the whip and take the consequences, that just before the vote at 7pm a junior Minister was sent down to the Commons to say that it wasn't going to be a confidence vote after all. Then, asked by a succession of MPs whether this meant that they could vote for Labour's motion without being expelled, he basically said, "Don't ask me mate - party discipline isn't my monkey."

At the division, utter chaos ensued, with Conservatives screaming abuse at each other outside the lobbies, and according to several Labour MPs, actual physical coercion being used by two Cabinet Ministers to force some MPs into the 'No' lobby. The Chief Whip and her Deputy both resigned on the spot, and the Prime Minister was last seen chasing the Chief Whip along the corridor, thus missing the division, and breaking her own whip - though it's now being claimed that she actually did vote 'No", but that 'somehow' her vote wasn't registered. Other senior Tories among the three dozen who abstained include Boris Johnson (on holiday), Nadine Dorries (sulking), David Davis (former Brexit Secretary and civil libertarian), Sir Iain Duncan Smith (ex Tory leader and general no-hoper), Kwasi Kwarteng (double sulking), Theresa May (former PM, I seem to remember), Alok Sharma (President of COP26), Priti Patel (previous worst-ever Home Secretary) and Ben Wallace (in Washington to talk about the end of the world). Plus the Chief Whip, Wendy Morton,who of course was being pursued down a corridor at the time.

In late news, the Chief Whip and her Deputy are now said to be "still in post", though whether anyone has told them this yet remains unclear. Krishnan Guru-Murthy has felt constrained to apologise after a recording surfaced of him calling "Brexit hard man" Steve Baker a - well, look it up. (Baker has accepted the apology.) And according to numerous journos whose phones are currently in meltdown, the Cabinet is contemplating defenestration. If they bottle it though, ordinary MPs are probably angry enough to force Truss out.

Prime Minister Braverman, anyone...?