Here at the furnace door, where bones can be incinerated in seconds and reputations roasted, Labour had a 10.30am urgent question on “Downing Street Christmas parties”.
Which unfortunate minister would be chosen to answer? We should have guessed. Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Knees-Ups turned out to be “Sir” Michael Ellis, the Northamptonshire barrister whose voice and manner have the glutinous homogeneity of smooth peanut butter.
When you want a crisis corked, he’s your man.
Although not actually a knight, Ellis is so seamlessly, spherically magniloquent — an assiduous monarchist, to boot — that everyone accepts it is only a matter of time before the Buckingham Palace dubbing ceremony is accommodated in his busy diary.
“Parties” was not a word Ellis would countenance. When it fell from the lips of others, disappointment corrugated his brow, regretful at the imprecision. Ellis preferred “gatherings”. The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, had been asked to establish swiftly “the nature of any gatherings”.
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These would include “a gathering” on November 27, “a gathering” on December 10 and “a gathering” on December 12.
As all these gatherings gathered force, amusement rippled across the chamber.
The Commons is not yet (quite) so mad with malevolence that it does not savour the comedy of arch lawyerliness.
Physically, Ellis is no wisp of egg white. He must be 6ft 3in and a good 17 stone, his burly frame encased in the finest silks and poplins, yet he used a dulcet legato to echo the prime minister’s regrets about the “flippancy” shown by Downing Street staff on Allegra Stratton’s controversial training video.
“Frankly inexcusable”, murmured Ellis, with a severity he might normally reserve for an underbaked trout soufflé at Judge’s Lodgings.
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The urgent question had been put by Fleur Anderson (Lab, Putney). Not the sharpest of knives, she twice referred to the “alleg/ed” parties, pronouncing the word the way some curates say “bless/ed”. Ellis listened to her contribution with a neutral expression, occasionally smoothing the few strands of his shoe-polish hair. He was a model of courtroom courtesy.
MPs who raged or scoffed or, in the case of Afzal Khan (Lab, Gorton), spoke movingly of their own family losses, were answered in the same modulated tone.
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid, Dwyfor Meirionnydd) went into pub-philosopher mode with a riff about no man or woman being an island. “We must remember for whom the bell tolls!” mused Saville Roberts, raising a self-appreciative eyebrow.
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Ellis, being rather less of an eisteddfod bard, hailed her quotation from “Robert Donne”. We need to hear more from poetry’s neglected talents — Nigel Shakespeare. Basil Taylor Coleridge. Wayne Wordsworth.
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Criticism came not just from the opposition benches. Conservatives such as Philip Hollobone (Kettering) and Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) went on the attack.
Ellis smeared them with peanut butter.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (SNP, West Dunbartonshire) thought any event where officials were “knocking back glasses of wine” was surely a party, not a gathering. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck,” observed Docherty-Hughes, lowering his field glasses. Ellis murmured to the Scots Nat ornithologist that “no doubt, if he has any evidence, he may wish to supply it to the cabinet secretary”.
The whole point of the investigation was “to establish swiftly a general understanding of the nature of any gatherings that took place”.
After a question from Derek Twigg (Lab, Halton), Ellis referred to political parties. MPs, happily: “Gatherings!”
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Only occasionally did acidity cut through this adipose tissue. Class warrior Andy McDonald (Lab, Middlesbrough) snarled about Boris Johnson’s “narcissistic, cheating existence”.
Ellis lightly removed a few flecks of McDonald’s breakfast chipolata from his lapels before carrying serenely on his way.
And when Bob Blackman (C, Harrow East) announced that the prime minister’s wife had just given birth, and Ellis confirmed that the baby girl had been “safely delivered”, Labour MPs groaned.
