It is now parliamentary tradition that whenever Roger Federer wins a tennis tournament John Bercow has to coo about it at the earliest opportunity. Yes, the same Speaker Bercow who is always ticking off MPs for wasting time. A question on school sport during education questions gave the Speaker his chance to bring up the recent news from Melbourne.
“Ah, a heaven-sent opportunity to congratulate the inimitable Roger Federer,” he gushed. “He just gets better and better.” Perhaps Mr Speaker was still thinking about that immaculate Swiss forehand a few minutes later, when he took his eye off the ball and called the wrong MP.
It was not the only unforced error on display. Michael Fabricant (C, Lichfield) wrong-footed himself by daring to speak German. “Vielen Dank, Herr Sprecher,” he told Mr Bercow, before forgetting what he had planned to say in English. “I have completely thrown myself,” he admitted. It turned out that Mr Fabricant, or Herr Hersteller as they call him in Berlin, wanted to ask about the teaching of German.
“It is easy for British people to speak German with a convincing accent,” he insisted, despite the recent evidence.
“It’s a bad herr day,” some wag heckled. Or perhaps that was a comment on the Fab frisur.
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Wera Hobhouse (LD, Bath), who was born in Hanover, kept to English but also slipped up and was politely scolded by the Speaker after asking a supplementary question that did not relate to the one on the order paper. She followed Nick Gibb, the schools minister, who turned over too many pages in his folder and gave an answer about mental health to a question about LGBT awareness.
It took a while before anyone noticed. He was just finishing when Damian Hinds, his boss, tugged at his jacket and gently pointed out the error. This attention to detail reflected well on the education secretary, who was making his debut as a cabinet minister.
With grey hair, grey tie and neat answers, Mr Hinds did not instantly catch the attention. Not like Anne Milton, one of his junior ministers, who had splashes of bright red dye in her hair that made it look as if she had walked through a low door without ducking and needed to visit matron. Mr Hinds, however, had an air of quiet competence, that calm unflappability often lacking in politics, and a headmaster’s knack of silencing chatter with a look or a pointed finger. One to keep an eye on.
When he was at Oxford Mr Hinds beat a certain Jacob Rees-Mogg to be elected president of the union. The Mogg gets all the attention now. His opinion was even sought by Talk Radio yesterday on the death of the founder of Ikea. “I have never been to Ikea,” said The Mogg, who is not really the sort to do self-assembly furniture. “I have no ambitions in that direction. It sounds enormously difficult.” He’ll never make the cabinet at this rate.
For now he is happy to play gadfly to the prime minister’s slow-moving carthorse but as spokesman for supporters of a hard Brexit his sting is becoming ever more potent.
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The Mogglets raised concerns in an urgent question that our departure from the EU will drag on and on, becoming an imperfect situation rather than a perfect one. Or, in language that The Mogg himself might use, more of a Bregebat than a Brexit.
His crew were paid a compliment of sorts by Stephen Gethins, of the SNP, who said that they were giving his party “a good run for our money” in being the real opposition on this subject. That no one on the Labour benches even bothered to dispute him says something.