This Westminster farce is making me embarrassed to be British

Another day, another key vote. But no way, apparently, to engage Parliament’s forward gears. Has there in modern times been a more undistinguished House of Commons than the one we have today? Was ever Britain’s destiny at a time of national crisis reposed in such a band of nincompoops, know-nothings and nobodies?

Historians will refer back to the days of the Long Parliament (1640-1660) in search of a more enduring case of self-serving incompetence. For our grandparents, the House elected in 1935 that gave Neville Chamberlain a Tory majority of 242 might provide an alternative example of sustained ineptitude – though in that instance a certain Winston Churchill was poised to fill the void. But for the rest of us, it is the 650 MPs currently elected to the green benches of the Palace of Westminster who look destined to win the Oscar for Most Useless Representative Body of the twenty-first century.

Let me admit, though gritted teeth, that there are in fact individuals possessed of brains and common sense. Several might reasonably be thought brilliant, others patriotic beyond consideration of party. But just as the Metropolitan Police was once labelled institutionally racist, so the 2017 House of Commons, constructed on the shaky foundations of its 2015 predecessor, must be dubbed institutionally incompetent.

If this is the best Britain can do on the eve of our scheduled departure from the European Union, then Brexit could well prove the least of our problems.

Is there even one of the present Cabinet who could be judged a notable holder of their office? From Theresa May down, by way of Chris Grayling, Gavin Williamson, Karen Bradley and Liam Fox, they are, collectively, a national embarrassment. Those senior Cabinet ministers lining up to replace our increasingly pitiful prime minister – Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt – are flat-footed and pedestrian when it comes to inspiring voters. Margaret Thatcher, who knew a thing or two about leadership, would have refused to delegate responsibility for as much as fetching her a cup of coffee to this shower of deadbeats.

Now think of the papabile who stake their claims from beyond the College of Cardinals: Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Johnson is viewed as an intellectual only by those who imagine that his frequent use of Latin phrases mean he is a British Cicero. In fact, he is a blowhard and a buffoon. He is also insanely ambitious. It would be as mad for the voters to place their confidence in Boris as prime minister as it would be for a woman to believe that Fidelio, rather than De Pfeffel, was his middle name.   

Rees-Mogg, then? Surely not. The member for North East Somerset is a walking anachronism, more like Mr Samgrass out of Brideshead Revisited than a twenty-first century reformer. Even the Catholic church finds some of his religious views out of kilter with the times. He understands with impressive acuity how to make money – viz his consultancy’s decision to open funds in the Eurozone. But he wishes ordinary Britons well in the way past generations used to wish the world’s starving millions well: the sentiment is sincere, just don’t expect much in the way of self-sacrifice to bring it about.

But if the principal actors on the Tory stage have been exposed as hams, the supporting cast and extras give every bit as much cause for concern. Mark Francois, Michael Fabricant, Marcus Fysh (anyone with the initials MF, really): would you put any of them in charge of anything on which you or anyone close to you depended?

They’re not about doing the right thing, they’re about  holding on to their seats and keeping their incarnation of the Conservative Party in government.

Which brings us to Her Majesty’s Opposition – spineless as well as incompetent. Jeremy Corbyn, unlike, say, the late Tony Benn, is the hard-Left’s useless idiot. His preferred tense is the future perfect, othewise known as the future in the past. John McDonnell is like the Strelnikov character in Dr Zhivago, played in the film version by Tom Courtenay. He is highly intelligent and bent on change that he says will benefit the masses. But most of all, he is ruthless. In the Pasternak novel, Strelnikov ends up shooting himself. McDonnell is more likely to shoot Corbyn. 

Arguably, there are still some good people in Labour’s upper ranks ­– Hilary Benn, say; Keir Starmer; Yvette Cooper; David Lammy; even the somewhat hapless Tom Watson (who under John Smith might have risen, eventually, to be minister of state for work and pensions). And there is also, of course, Diane Abbott. But even the best of them look to have sold their souls to the Corbyn-McDonnell double-act, in which Corbyn is a malign Little Ern and McDonnell a humourless Eric Morecambe.

You only have to look behind Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions to realise what a consummate fraud he is:­ all those women and ethnic minority MPs – though not so many Jews – crammed together for the TV close-up, as if the People’s Party was a model of diversity rather than a coalition of the clueless.

Needless to say, the Liberal Democrats are… while the Scot Nats, sporting their canary-yellow lanyards like delegates to a Highlands marketing conference, masquerade as outsiders when the truth is they are intensely jealous of their position as number three in the party rankings.

And let us not forget the Democratic Unionists. The DUP are not stupid, they are simply nasty, focused to the exclusion of all else on their party’s provincial hegemony and detestation not of Europe, but of the Irish Republic. At least Sinn Fein doesn’t pretend to be British.

What a collection! No wonder the European drama has turned into a Whitehall farce. No wonder the British people have lost all faith in their politicians. Wake me up when the present generation of MPs has retired or lost their seats. Post-Brexit Britain deserves a post-Brexit parliament.