We’re living in a golden age of parliamentary sketch writing; never have so many been made mincemeat of by so few. Our own Madeline Grant combines coruscating character assassination with a sense of humour so light and playful that she often appears like a kitten prancing on a keyboard, delighted by the sound she’s making. And of course there’s Quentin Letts, the doyen of sketch writers, formerly of the Times and Telegraph and most recently returned to his natural home at the Daily Mail. I reviewed a book of his some years back and found it elegant, muscular and witty.
It’s always a joy to behold someone who excels at what they do – that is, if the beholder is also good at their job. If not, then excellence can appear somewhat… threatening. This crossed my mind on reading the alarmingly lame X post by Stella Creasy criticising Mr Letts for writing this of Andy Burnham’s press conference on Wednesday: ‘V slow delivery from Burnham. He keeps almost losing his thread. Maybe he is distracted by amazingly short skirt in front row.’
Creasy gasped at the gall of this fellow daring to look at the legs of women without written consent and then produced this gem of Lady Muck-style self-regard: ‘This man stares down on us from the parliamentary lobby into the chamber on a daily basis. Shudder doesn’t begin to cover it.’
What exactly is Creasy going to do if that nasty man keeps looking at her – have a boo-hoo?
I couldn’t help going in:
What a weird thing to say! He’s an excellent writer – if only you were as good at YOUR job. Why do you appear to be scared of a free press? The use of *shudder* makes you seem very weak and over-protected.
There were a great many robust X responses – I particularly liked this one from Paul in Sussex:
Labour women MPs are tough as old boots. Nothing makes them shudder except the thought that some worker somewhere might have managed to protect from further socialist theft a bit of earnings or assets on which they’ve already been taxed.
Even if we presume her sincerity at being freaked out, what exactly is Creasy going to do if that nasty man keeps looking at her – have a boo-hoo, like poor old Rachel from Accounts? Luckily it didn’t take long for her fellow Labour ladies to come to the aid of their shuddering sister – one to hold the smelling salts under her nose, another to help the poor dear onto her fainting couch. Spat Bridget Phillipson:
The Prime Minister is setting out how we grasp the vitally important issue of social care, and this man is yet again making debased comments about women’s appearances. It’s gross, it’s misogynistic and it needs to be rooted out of our media and society.
But the stitch’ n’ bitch session reached new heights of preposterous pomposity when who should chip in but MP Samantha ‘Summer of Sex’ Niblett:
This man wants his parliamentary pass removing from him. What decade are we living in? Shame on you.
As Christopher Talbot posted: ‘MP who wanted sex toys in parliament criticises political commentator who mentioned the length of a skirt’. Indeed it was somewhat surreal to see Niblett become a pearl-clutcher just because a man implied that women have legs.
We were only missing the thoughts of Lucy Powell – who dismissed the industrial-scale rape of female children as ‘a racist dog whistle’ – to have the full set of attention-seeking hypocrites. Because, of course, these Labour trans-maids all support the right of biological men calling themselves Belinda to intrude on women’s spaces. But the women feeling threatened in public toilets and in jail are only hoi polloi, they’re not like the special Labour ladies, whose finer feelings and superior sensibilities must be observed at all times. Gareth Roberts wrote of Creasy:
That haughty manner! That smarmy, simpering smirk – so transparently, unctuously, complacently pleased with itself!
She doesn’t believe that anyone should be looking down at her, let alone daring to mock anything she says, the scribbling little oiks! (Creasy’s mother described her own parents as ‘very aristocratic’ and herself as ‘enormously privileged’.)
I can’t help thinking that another reason why the Labour lasses en masse seem increasingly tetchy is that yet another Lad is Labour leader, while every day across the floor Mrs Badenoch grows in eloquence and elan. Her popularity continues to climb; the credibility of Labour women continues to plummet.
If I didn’t know what a woman was, let alone a parakeet, as Creasy recently inadvertently revealed, I think I’d give genuinely clever people – like Mr Letts – a wide berth. And if I was part of a cohort who didn’t have the gumption to wrest the leadership from The Men after every other British political party has had at least one female leader, frankly I’d stop pretending to be a feminist.
