The insider’s guide to Westminster: from Portcullis House to the Burma Road
Westminster is frequently described as a bubble. It’s less fragile than that. Bubbles are more easily pierced. Rather, it is a hermetically sealed environment that encourages introspection and self-importance, and from which the outside world is largely excluded. It is the centre of its own universe. Politicians frequently talk about how much they enjoy meeting the public, but they seldom look more awkward than when meeting real people, and their minders go to great lengths to ensure they don’t have to.
.. Just as the Queen must believe that every toilet in the world is kept in pristine condition with a new lavatory seat installed every day, so too politicians can easily lose touch with reality.
.. In 2001, Jo Moore, a spin doctor in the Department of Transport, was forced to resign after sending out an email on 9/11 that said: “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”
.. Having two pieces of good news on the same day is a waste of good news. Bad news, however, is best dealt with wholesale. If the government releases several reports on the same day, it is odds-on that there is something it doesn’t like in at least two of them.
.. Many MPs may frequently have little idea of the nuances of what they are voting on and are unlikely to have been following the debate closely. In these instances, they aren’t being paid to think. They are being paid to vote the way their party wants them to.
.. Much of the grandeur is barely even skin-deep; the roof and ceilings leak, the masonry is crumbling and not even the small army of builders, conservators and contractors who are permanently on site can hold the building together. In political parlance, Westminster is not fit for purpose. What to do about it is another matter. To restore the palace to full working order would cost about £3bn and require the Lords and Commons to relocate for several years. This is not the kind of decision any government wants to make.
.. Sexism is so everyday and institutionalised, most MPs fail to even realise its existence. Even now, some MPs cup their hands across their chest and jig them up and down – off-camera, of course – when a woman gets up to speak.
.. The questions vary week on week but the responses do not. The prime minister is not obliged to answer, merely to say something. Traditionally, Cameron either answers a different question to the one he has been asked or asks why he hasn’t been asked a question about something he has done well.
.. The Tories tend to ask him if he happens to be aware how well his long-term economic plan is working in their constituencies. He does. Labour MPs ask him if he knows that his long-term economic plan isn’t working in their constituencies. He says they are misinformed.