Today we have seen various reminders of the quirks and oddities of our political system; conventions and traditions that seemingly have no point but go back hundreds of years. The final stage in choosing the new speaker for the house will be getting approval from the Queen for the "Commoners" choice; she does this via the House of Lords, who will get Black Rod to walk to the Commons (where they will slam the door shut on him and he will bang on the door three times before they let him in... yet more tradition very brilliantly and convincingly disguised as pantomine) and he will let them know the Queen approves of their choice (presumably!).
Of course, this is an unscheduled appearance from Black Rod. He is most famous for his men in tights routine at the State Opening of Parliament once a year. On top of all the age old tradition you can gurantee seeing at a Black Rod occasion, is the relatively more modern tradition of a quip by the Beast of Bolsover - Dennis Skinner MP.
A staunch leftie, Skinner is notoriously anti just about everything, though especially the Tories, New Labour and the Monarachy. In the past his quips have included:
On arrival of Black Rod quipping "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label"; a reference to an advertising campaign at the time.
In 1992, he said to Black Rod "Tell her to pay her taxes"; at the time, this was an important political issue.
In 2006, Skinner responded to Black Rod's invitation with "Is Helen Mirren on standby?", in reference to the portrayal by Helen Mirren of Elizabeth II in the 2006 film, The Queen.
The beast has, as a result of his sharp tongue, been suspended many a time from the chamber. Reasons have included the time he called John Gummer as "slimy" and a "wart" or the time he boldly claimed that "The only thing that was growing then were the lines of coke in front of boy George and the rest of the Tories"
However, for me, Skinners' finest moment came in 1976...
Roy Jenkins was delivering his final speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party before he went off to Brussels to become President of the EU Commission. On the same day the MP for Ashfield, David Marquand (a close friend of Jenkins) was also leaving the Commons. Roy Jenkins said of his time in the Commons that he "leaves this party without rancour". Rancour being a particularly poor choice of word for Jenkins - he famously could not pronounce his Rs, instead they came out as Ws; Skinners' brilliant response was simply -"I thought you were taking Marquand with you".
Labels: James G