You have heard, no doubt, about the US Army’s dalliance with the paranormal where it experimented with the idea that if men stared at goats long enough, they could kill them. It is my theory that Tory backbenchers have hit on their own version of The Men Who Stare At Goats. Readers, I bring you: The Men Who Stare at Bercow.
They were doing it yesterday. I saw them. They stared at the Speaker throughout PMQs, a fairly serious affair in which everyone agreed on everything but Scotland. MPs were then supposed to move on to the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill (which should include goats, for they are often wild) but the Men Who Stare at Bercow had other ideas.
“Point of Order, Mr Speaker!” cried Simon Burns. The MP for Chelmsford has a silken manner but he did once have to apolgise for calling the Speaker a sanctimonious dwarf and he hasn’t been happy since.
If Mr Speaker’s heart sank, he did not show it. He knows that the Men Who Stare at Bercow want to kill him and that, in the kerfuffle over the appointment of an Australian as the new clerk of the Commons, they think they have found their poisoned apple. On Monday he had to announce a “modest pause” in the recruitment process. Bercow has now has become even more punctiliously pernickety faux-polite (he likes words that start with p) than usual. Thus Mr Burns was assaulted with niceness.
But what was this? The flamboyant hairdo that is Michael Fabricant, whose big eyes have been staring very hard at Bercow, was also raising a point of (dis)order about an arcane clerk-related matter.
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“Unfortunately,” said Bercow, allowing a modest pause, for he is fond of them these days, “but fairly predictably, you are wrong.” Bercow, after a minor kerfuffle with the Hairdo, announced: “I think the House will want to proceed with its business.”
However, the House couldn’t have cared less about proceeding with its business. Up popped Christopher Pincher, a rather dandified Tory. He said there had been a story in the press that Mr Speaker thought that most MPs hadn’t a clue what the clerk did and thought he was “just a man in a wig”.
It was the word “wig” that did it. I saw Mr Speaker jerk when it was said. “Order! Order!” he barked, telling Mr Pincher to “resume his seat” (the words “sit down” being far too direct). Mr Pincher did this, his eyes pinned to the Speaker for obvious reasons.
“I do invite you and other members as a whole to rise to the level of events,” said Bercow, just a little pompously, to sounds of outrage, though it was hard to discern whether it was pro or anti outrage.
“I think perhaps we can leave it there,” said the Speaker.
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He had, however, lost the House and that is a terrible thing for the Speaker. Sir Edward Leigh, the straight-talking Tory for Gainsborough who is a grandee-in-training, said: “In my experience, if a democratic assembly is to function properly, it is absolutely vital to uphold the authority of the Speaker.”
This was met with a loud “HEAR, HEAR”. Mr Speaker pounced on this comment as a sign of support (though I am not sure it was) and said, rather pathetically: “Let us proceed in an orderly way.”
The Men Who Stare at Bercow glanced at each other. They think that looks can kill and maybe, if you aren’t a goat, they can.