QUENTIN LETTS: The Commons fell silent as Richard Holden detailed delivery defects which first cousin marriages might make extra doubtless

Richard Holden (Con, Basildon & Billericay) proposed a short bill seeking to stop people marrying their cousins. 

Iqbal Mohamed, an Independent MP, made eyeballs bulge a little by leaping to his hind legs and defending our right to hop into wedlock with a kinsman.

Such an activity could ‘help build family bonds’, argued Mr Mohamed. Quite the Yorkshireman, he furthermore claimed that it could make financial sense. 

He may not have been referring exactly to this but one can see that when it comes to Christmas cards it might save a few stamps if your aunt was also your mother-in-law. The cost of postage these days is not to be sniffed at.

Conservatives are normally pro-marriage but Mr Holden, currently a bachelor, took a dim view of cousin-marriage. He blamed Henry VIII, who in 1540 changed the law so that he could marry Catherine Howard, one of his previous wives’ first cousins. 

Henry VIII disliked being told what to do by Continentals, particularly if they happened to be Popes. 

You would expect a trenchant Brexiteer such as Mr Holden to approve of that attitude. Not so. Mr Holden feared a rise in birth defects. 

The Commons fell silent as he detailed some of the conditions that could be made more likely by cousin-marriage. These included facial clefts, cerebral palsy and cancer.

Richard Holden (Con, Basildon & Billericay) proposed a short bill seeking to stop people marrying their cousins – he is pictured here walking outside No10

Iqbal Mohamed, MP for Dewsbury and Batley, told the House of Commons that many people view family intermarriage as ‘very positive’

He added that the freedom of young women could be imperilled if they came under pressure from their families to accept the hand of Cousin Rodney, or perhaps more likely Cousin Yusuf. 

Or Cousin Seamus. 

Mr Holden reported that cousin-marriage was particularly high among British Pakistanis and Irish travellers. Elsewhere, the practice had ebbed. 

The Chinese were not at all keen on it.

No discussion of marriage laws is complete without a few bracing lines of Old Testament. Archdeacon Holden duly cited Leviticus which states ‘none of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness’. 

All this at lunchtime on a Tuesday. My thoughts flew longingly to the sherry bottle but I resisted. 

If you try to write a parliamentary sketch after a schooner or two of amontillado you may be stopped by the authorities and asked to breathe into a bag. 

Drunk in charge of a metaphor.

Mr Holden, not content with biffing the Tudors, claimed that cousin-marriage had pretty much done for the Hapsburg monarchy in Spain. 

Mr Mohamed spoke out against Tory MP Richard Holden’s (pictured) efforts to bring in new legislation to prohibit the marriage of first cousins

The MP did not mention that Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, were first cousins. They did all right, did they not?

If Henry VIII had employed professional reputation consultants they might have pointed out that His Majesty went through several wives, all of whom had multiple cousins. 

Royalty did not mix much with the general public in those days. Under the old Vatican-inspired rules forbidding marriage to a cousin, King Henry would likely have run out of romantic options. 

Like Mrs Thatcher, he had no alternative. He was prepared to think the unthinkable.

We also heard that Charles Darwin married a first cousin, though he later allegedly regretted it. Of the 10 children the evolutionary biologist and his wife had, three died young. 

Mr Mohamed made the pro-choice argument once more commonly associated with Tory benches. 

Sounding less like the Corbynite he is reputed to be, and more like a disciple of the great Conservative thinker Roger Scruton, the man from Dewsbury said the state should not be given more powers. 

Anyway, a ban would be widely ignored and it would be impossible to impose. Cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia were jolly keen on cousin-marriage. 

The same appears to be true of the Kirklees district east of the Pennines.

Mr Holden’s proposal was only a 10-minute rule bill. That meant it stood almost zero chance of becoming law. Mr Mohamed did not press his objection to a division

Labour MPs kept well out of the debate. They possibly think they are already in enough trouble with British-Muslim voters.