Here at Westminster, where flag-waving children line the boulevards to celebrate socialism’s triumph and civil servants dance at maypoles to the bark of Garrison Sergeant Major Sue Gray, English has been replaced as the official language. Its successor: Mandarin-Esperanto.
It is an elusive tongue. At first you think you understand but soon you realise it might as well be Swahili, or a Cecil Sharp recording of Silbo Gomero shepherds whistling across Canary Isle ravines. Questions to the Cabinet Office brought Pat McFadden to the despatch box. Mr McFadden, grindingly mirthless, bald as a walnut, is the Andrei Gromyko of the British Left.
Aged 58, he could be almost twice that. Audiences soon look older, slumped in their seats, mouths agape, dribbling.Â
A couple of new MPs asked about official usage of technology. Mr McFadden talked of ‘the government digital service’s incubator for artificial intelligence‘. The MPs blinked a bit. They had no more idea than the rest of us what an incubator for intelligence might be.
Georgia Gould, under-minister, was asked to stop the public being ripped off in state contracts. She replied that ‘public procurement is a key lever for enabling the delivery of missions. The digital centre of government will ensure procurement drives uptake of new digital technologies.’ At which she beamed and returned to her place alongside Comrade Gromyko.
Under-minister Georgia Gould (pictured) was asked to stop the public being ripped off in state contracts. She replied that ‘public procurement is a key lever for enabling the delivery of missions’
Sir Keir Starmer (left) laughs with Georgia Gould (right) whose late father was Tony Blair’s pollster
Joe Powell (Lab, Kensington & Bayswater): ‘I thank the minister for her answer.’ Ha! If he’s not careful, young Powell – who could be Chris Grayling’s less suave twin – will be up before the Whips for impertinence.
Miss Gould said her ‘key lever’ could ‘make huge strides in delivering social value’. My Mandarin-Esperanto phrasebook suggests this meant ‘we’ll only give contracts to firms that bend to our politically-correct demands – never mind the cost’.
Mandarin-Esperanto, like Homeric verse, is threaded by figurative epithets. You may talk of being ‘determined to learn lessons’ even though no such determination exists. You ‘set out commitments to drive down fraud and drive up standards’ – prepositions are dotted like raisins in a spotted dick. You ‘deliver’ abstracts such as ‘social value’, ‘change’ and ‘standards’.
All these were coughed up by Miss Gould, 38, who became an MP three weeks ago and, like a few other favourites, has been catapulted straight into a ministerial job, to the fury of more experienced parliamentarians. Her late father was Tony Blair’s pollster and her mum is a bigshot publisher and Labour peer.
Orderlies removed linguistic debris from the field of play, an umpire said ‘new balls please’ and Abena Oppong-Asare stepped to the despatch box. Ms Oppong-Asare is another Cabinet Office minister. Corker. She didn’t seem to have put her teeth in quite right and several words came out mangled.
Like McFadden and Gould she read the replies prepared for her by her civil servants. Then, disaster. She dropped her file! She snatched the nearest piece of paper and read something that did not appear remotely linked to the question.
Not that many noticed. The chap from Harlow couldn’t read the question he (or someone else) had typed on a piece of trembling paper. The MP for Stourbridge, covered in tattoos, wittered on so long, even kindly Speaker Hoyle snapped at her. She nearly burst into tears. The other night a chap called Baggy Shanker (Lab, Derby S) addressed the deputy speaker as ‘Madam Deputy Mayor’.
Joe Powell (pictured) – MP for Kensington and Bayswater – thanked Ms Gould for her answer
Pat McFadden (left), Abena Oppong-Asare (centre) and Rachel Reeves (right) attend the Labour Party Conderence in Liverpool in 2022
As for Cabinet Office ministers, they are supposed to control the civil service. Really it works the other way round. The one minister to extemporise yesterday was Nick Thomas-Symonds, informative and capable. Sue Gray won’t like that.
His other colleague, Ellie Reeves, said ‘er’ a lot. But her husband and late father-in-law were Labour MPs and her sister is the Chancellor. It fell to Rupa Huq (Lab, Ealing C) to demand that the Starmer government get rid of ‘cronyism and nepotism’.
Rupa, for whom I actually have a soft spot, is a daft old brush and probably did not realise how disloyal her question was.
