QUENTIN LETTS: Snapping like Lily Savage, Esther McVey lower him down

Last weekend, it was International Men’s Day – when the world’s sniffling milquetoasts have their second.

For 24 hours, annually, everybody must be variety to Walter the Softy. Or, as we name him at Westminster, Oliver Dowden.

Mr Dowden, reasonably amazingly, is the deputy prime minister. A drippier faucet could be onerous to search out. You could bear in mind ‘La-Di-Dah’ Gunner Graham, the pianist in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, or Charles Hawtrey, star of the Carry On movies. Both, by comparability to Mr Dowden, had been muscular creations.

‘Olive’, as Mr Dowden is thought in Whitehall, got here flapping in for morning questions on the Commons yesterday, accompanied by numerous ministerial colleagues on the Cabinet Office. A mallard together with her ducklings.

Among these underlings – not that they might fairly see themselves as that – was Esther McVey, newly restored to Downing Street‘s high desk. She has been made ‘minister for frequent sense’.

As a slaughterhouse employee approaches a ram, so did Ms McVey step to the despatch field

She flexed her fingers, solid a pitiless eye at Ms McGovern, and sliced her in two

Common sense? ‘I recognize that the idea is tough for Opposition members to know,’ she snapped in her Lily Savage voice

As Alison McGovern (Lab, Wirral South) famous, about ten days after everybody else made the joke, the appointment of a minister for frequent sense appeared to indicate that nobody else at No 10 had any.

As a slaughterhouse employee approaches a ram, so did Ms McVey step to the despatch field. She flexed her fingers, solid a pitiless eye at Ms McGovern, and sliced her in two.

Common sense? ‘I recognize that the idea is tough for Opposition members to know,’ she snapped in her Lily Savage voice.

‘I’m dedicated to delivering common sense choices equivalent to delaying the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles, delaying the ban on oil and gasoline boilers, scrapping HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, decreasing the abroad funds – all common sense insurance policies that these on the other benches have voted in opposition to.’

Next up was Andrew Gwynne (Lab, Denton and Reddish). Brave however expendable. The type of character who in cowboy movies used to get shot simply earlier than the intermission.

He took a tilt at glamorous Esther however she quickly lower him down, saying the Government had simply launched ‘the most important everlasting tax cuts in trendy British historical past – chopping taxes, not just like the Opposition, who need extra borrowing and spending’. An undertaker sprang to the scene with a tape measure for Mr Gwynne.

Labour frontbencher Nick Thomas-Symonds seized his buckler and went to class battle with Ms McVey. He made digs about Rishi Sunak’s helicopter and the Tories’ help for personal faculties.

Ms McVey, an unashamed working-class believer in aspiration, handled him as a steamroller would flatten a worm solid.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden (File Photo)

If dad and mom wished to ship their kids to non-public faculties, that was freedom of selection, she stated. If Labour pressured such faculties to close, it could solely imply that the general public sector must discover billions to accommodate displaced pupils. Mr Thomas-Symonds, like Monty Python’s knight, departed in quite a few items.

Sadly, that was all we heard from Ms McVey. Most of the question-time was hogged by moss-damp Dowden and his prosaic understudy John Glen. But it was not lengthy earlier than we had one other indomitable girl on the despatch field: Penny Mordaunt, chief of the Commons, for weekly enterprise questions.

First she dealt briskly together with her shadow, Lucy Powell. Then we had the customary brutality of her exchanges with the SNP’s Deidre Brock. These Thursday exchanges have turn out to be horrible punishment beatings and ended this time with an imperious denunciation of the ‘slopey-shouldered separatism of the SNP’. Any boxing ref would have stepped in so much earlier to cease the carnage.

Westminster just isn’t wanting robust girls at current. Labour’s deputy chief, Angela Rayner, is twice the parliamentarian Sir Keir Starmer is. Rachel Reeves has Sir Keir’s voice however a throatier model.

The Tories, along with the McVey-Mordaunt combo, have Suella Braverman (presently deep in her tent, brewing noxious cauldrons). They additionally, extra positively, have Therese Coffey, who left workplace on the identical day as Suella was sacked however has refused to complain and has thrown herself into the backbench fray. She gave an SNP man, Peter Grant (Glenrothes), a agency biffing yesterday.

Having a male deputy PM is pathetic tokenism.