The Mysterious Affair of the Midnight Intervention
The surreal Westminster story of the day concerns the blocked election of Labour MP Cathy Jamieson - who has knowledge and experience of issues related to the current excitement - to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee which today will be grilling the Murdochs. Select committee appointments are generally uncontroversial and unopposed. In fact, there’s even a cross-party committee which agrees on the party makeup and membership of each select committee. So when the appointment of Cathy Jamieson was agreed upon by that committee and was put to the House as a quick petition last night, everyone was remarkably surprised when an obscure Tory backbencher shouted “NO!”, thus objecting to the appointment and referring it back for resubmission or debate.
It’s even more surprising that this happens the night before one of the most important sittings the DCMS Select Committee has ever had, leaving it one member short. Even more surprisingly, the obscure backbencher concerned - Nick de Bois, member for Enfield North - has apparently never met Ms Jamieson. There is no history between the two. An admittedly cursory look at Hansard suggests that de Bois has neither a history of showing an interest in culture, media and sport or a tendency to attend the House during the wee small hours (the latter is just going on his last few speeches, so I might be wrong there).
So why, on a day like this, would a random backbencher stay at the House until after midnight - not participating in any of the other business of the Commons, according to Hansard - just to shout “NO!” when the motion for Ms Jamieson’s appointment was moved? If the objection was somehow party political (which is unlikely, given that he was going against his own parliamentary party’s specific agreement to appoint her) why did he not also object to the other select committee appointment that was nodded through immediately after his intervention? And why, moreover, did he not object to Ms Jamieson’s somewhat less urgent appointment to the committee on member’s expenses only minutes earlier?
The government (his own party..) has moved to have the Commons reconsider the nomination and it will no doubt go through given the cross-party support it has - but this is not going to happen before the Committee meets this afternoon.
de Bois has so far been silent on the matter, which is strange considering that @nickdebois is a prolific Tweeter on political matters.
Why did he deliberately and knowingly go to so much effort to nobble this sitting of the DCMS Committee? The rabbit hole continues to go ever deeper..
