Quentin Letts – Let’s Not Listen

The Daily Mail’s array of well remunerated but dubiously talented pundits has, by necessity, to include someone to cover the goings on of our elected representatives. Sad to say, though, that the appallingly sniffy and hyperbolic Quentin Letts, who fulfils this function at present, has formed the apparent belief that those in power care what he thinks.

Sad because it is clear that nobody who really matters in Parliament gives a fig what this representative of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre says, whatever the subject he chooses, and wherever and whenever he sounds off about it. And typical of this is Letts’ continual harping on about Commons Speaker John Bercow.

This singularly unsuccessful campaign against Speaker Bercow continued in Letts’ latest turgid column, where he suggests that Bercow requiring Liam Fox to attend the chamber and answer a question twice in three weeks is somehow exceeding his authority.

Quent goes as far as to opine “There is a theory that the Speaker is driven more by animus towards the Coalition ... than a genuine spirit of parliamentary accountability”. This is purest baloney: the only one thus theorising is Letts himself. The fact that a few Tory MPs tell him what he wants to hear is just that – it does not signal a movement to oust Bercow.

Letts could simply look back to the opening weeks of the new Parliament, when Bercow was confirmed as Speaker. Much was made in the right leaning part of the blogosphere of a potential rebellion against him, but in the event, a handful of Members objected, neither Young Dave nor Corporal Clegg showed the slightest dissent, and that was that.

Quent ought to put away his own animus – towards Bercow’s wife Sally in particular (exemplified HERE) – and stick to the reporting. Sadly, he probably won’t, and so will become even more of a tedious laughing stock than he is at present. But Paul Dacre will keep him well fed and watered.

So that’s all right, then.