SPECIAL FEATURE
MP’S BEHAVING BADLY BUT WHAT, EXACTLY, IS A GIRLY SWOT?
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or repartee and refined insults, the ongoing Commons debate over Brexit is a gift that keeps on giving. It has raised the usual battle of words in the ancient chamber to levels not heard in many a year—or lowered it as when the prime minister reaches into the dark memories of his childhood and hurls one of his favorite playground insults, like calling another politician a “girl’s blouse” or “girly swot.” The rough American equivalent of a swot is a nerd. More memorable samples:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, pointing to Labour leader Jeremy Corbin, who was sitting opposite at the time: “I know he’s worried about [post-Brexit] free trade deals with America, but there’s only one chlorinated chicken that I could see in this House, and he’s on that bench.” (The U.K., along with the European Union bars the importation of most U.S. poultry because the preparation process includes washing in chlorine). Prime Minister Boris Johnson: Corbin’s friends “are in the Kremlin, and in Iran, and in Caracas—and that’s what he is, carackers.” MP Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, dismissed from the Conservative Party for voting against the government:
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“I voted for the withdrawal agreement on every occasion that it’s been presented to the House, which is more than can said for my Right Honorable friend the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet whose serial disloyalty has been such an inspiration for so many of us.”
Speaker John Berkow to a female government minister after she spoke persistently, without his permission: “What I say in all courtesy to the Honorable Lady is sit there, be quiet, and if you can’t do so, leave the Chamber, we can manage without you.”
MP Pete Wishart, Scottish National Party member, about government minister and House Leader Jacob ReesMogg, a Conservative arch-Brexiteer, known for his knowledge of the history of the House and his languid, superior manner: “[Rees-Mogg] is the fifth leader of the House that I’ve had in my 40 years, but it has to be said that he’s by far the most exotic. But it would be as well if he remembers that he’s leader of the House of Commons, not the House of Plantagenet, or the House of Tudor.”
MP Tom Brake, Liberal-Democrat: “I really welcome the Leader of the House [Rees-Mogg] to his position because certainly the Liberal Democrats couldn’t really want for a better recruiting sergeant than him as we set up a contrast between Victorian values and Liberal Democrat values.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, in response to Wishart: “I want to point out that the House of Commons predates the House of Tudor. It started in 1265, when the burgesses come from the towns.” MP Pete Wishart, SNP: “Mr. Speaker, I went to bed last night and I had this horrible nightmare that the U.K. government had been taken over by rabid, right-wing Brexiteers, and I’m not sure whether I’m awake yet.”
Rees-Mogg, responding to Brake: “I may be a better recruiting sergeant for the Lib Dems than the honorable gentleman is, but I fear that may not be a difficult task.” Speaker Berkow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “I’m simply and politely informing the Prime Minister of the very long established procedure in which everybody, including the Prime Minister, must comply … It really is very, very unseemly. There is a procedure to statements of this kind, a very long established procedure, and I’m setting out the position and no one, be he ever so high, is going to tell me what the procedures in the chamber of the House of Commons are.”
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