Steerpike

'Après moi, le déluge.' Owen Paterson may be gone but Boris Johnson is still feeling his presence. This afternoon the Commons gathered for an emergency debate on the debacle of last week, with opposition MPs queuing up to (metaphorically) give the Prime Minister a damn good kicking. Within five minutes the first 'tinpot dictator' taunt had been hurled at the PM; within twenty he was accused of turning Parliament into the Duma of Tsarist Russia. For the absent PM, who is reportedly watching today's debate from a television in his office, it must have made for sobering stuff.But while the opposition brickbats might sting, it will be the contributions from Johnson's own side that give him most pause for thought.

Shock! Horror! Sir John Major has attacked Boris Johnson! In a breathlessly reported appearance on the Today programme, the former Tory PM lambasted his successor for his 'shameful' handling of the Owen Paterson row, denouncing Johnson's behaviour as 'politically corrupt' and 'damaging at home and to our reputation overseas.' Pretty strong stuff. Or it would be, perhaps, if Major hadn't made a number of similar such comments before. In Johnson's two years in office, his predecessor has launched at least half a dozen attacks on him over Brexit, the Supreme Court prorogation, the Internal Markets Bill, foreign aid and the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Following the killing of Sir David Amess, there has been much discussion in recent weeks about the safety of elected representatives. But while the public conversation has largely focused on radicalised loners, constituency surgeries and online abuse, Steerpike fears that the commentariat have overlooked the dangers still posed by hostile nation states to parliamentarians here in Westminster – particularly those who speak out about China. Earlier this year Mr S reported that MPs who have been sanctioned by Beijing for speaking out on the regime's human rights abuses have received 'zero substantive help' from the Foreign Office.

Well there we are then. Claudia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East, has this afternoon been sentenced to a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours’ community service for threatening to throw acid at a friend of her boyfriend and send naked pictures of the victim to her family.   Webbe, who was convicted of harassment last month, now faces a recall petition if her appeal against the verdict is not successful. Given her fellow MPs in Westminster seem so keen at present to close loopholes for misbehaving colleagues, Mr S wonders if they will consider the case of those who are convicted in a criminal court but get to remain in Parliament at taxpayers' expense, on the basis of an appeal.

A new Commons report is out today and it does not make for happy reading. The Ministry of Defence's (MoD) system of procurement is 'broken' with billions of taxpayers' money wasted, according to a cross party committee of MPs. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) judges that out of the MoD's 20 largest projects, 13 were running late by a cumulative total of 21 years.  This includes the £4 billion farce of the Ajax armoured vehicle — a piece of kit that has thus far managed to inflict more damage on its users than its targets, thanks to its excessive vibration and noise which left crews suffering from nausea, swollen joints and tinnitus. Currently there is 'no timescale' when it will be ready for service.

Looking down today's batting order at the COP26 summit, Steerpike's eye alighted on the name of Ursula von der Leyen. A failed German defence minister, kicked upstairs to her current post of President of the European Commission: who better to save the world than a superannuated Eurocrat?   And, with exquisite timing, the Daily Telegraph has this afternoon released an audit of VDL's jet-setting tours of Europe. The EU's top official ordered 'air taxis' for 18 out of her 34 official trips since taking up the role in December 2019, despite a pledge to turn the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050.  The shortest of the journeys was a 31-mile hop between Vienna and Bratislava, a journey which takes 68 minutes by public transport.

That didn't take long. It's less than four hours since America's septuagenarian president landed in Scotland and already he appears to have fallen asleep at the summit. Joe Biden was spotted shutting his eyes during one of the many, many speeches this afternoon, not opening them again until an awkward apparatchik ran over to disturb him. In fairness to the aged Democrat, sleep might have seemed like the most diplomatic option when faced with Brian Cox, David Attenborough and Prince Charles producing various outpourings of hot air in their efforts to curb global warming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsaEoozPLNo Still, at least Biden's COP is still going better than Justin Welby's.