Andy McSmith's Diary: Modern UK – it’s all champagne socialists and Dickensian bosses

After an eloquent speech by David Watts it was inevitably his aside about Labour that has attracted attention

Dickensian: Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley (Getty Images)

David Watts, a former secondary modern schoolboy from Huyton who is now Lord Watts, made a very eloquent maiden speech in the Lords in defence of trade unions. “If the Government really wanted to help working people,” he suggested, “they would make it easier for trade unions to represent working people in the workplace who are currently being abused by 17th-century employers, such as Mike Ashley in Sports Direct, who seems to treat his employees like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel.”

Inevitably, though, it was his aside about the current state of the Labour Party that has attracted comment. He described last week’s shadow cabinet reshuffle as “disastrous”, and suggested that the leadership “should take less notice of the London-centric, hard-left political class who sit around in their £1m mansions, eating croissants at breakfast and laying the foundations for a socialist revolution”. He went on: “It is not the job of the Parliamentary Labour Party to sit around developing ultra-left-wing policies that make it feel good… Working people need a practical Labour Party.”

The irony is that he was defending the right of trade unions to fund the Labour Party, but it was the big unions that gave rocket fuel to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign, thus bringing on the disaster that he so laments.

Corbyn aide for Labour seat?

Available soon: a very safe Labour seat. The MP for Ogmore, Huw Irranca-Davies – whose majority last year exceeded 13,000 – has decided to leave Parliament to join the Welsh Assembly in May. And why not? In Wales, Labour politicians wield power. In Westminster, they only sigh with frustration.

However, somebody will want to fill the vacated Ogmore seat. The word is that Jeremy Corbyn is hoping it will go to his political secretary, Katy Clark, the former North Ayrshire MP who lost her seat in last year’s SNP onslaught. But there are 415 miles of road and a large cultural gap between Ayr and Ogmore. It will be interesting to see if he gets his way.

Sweet taste of tax avoidance

The Labour MP Ruth Cadbury, who is proud of what her famous family did for chocolate and for their Birmingham workforce, is not pleased by the weekend’s revelation that the old family firm’s new multinational owners Mondelez International, formerly known as Kraft Foods, have legally avoided corporation tax since 2010.

“I am saddened to hear that Cadbury UK, a company my forebears grounded in ethics, has ‘paid no UK tax’ for five years,” she tweeted.

Inflammatory words

Another Labour peer who spoke eloquently in the same debate was Lord Watson of Invergowrie, who was recently appointed a shadow education minister by Mr Corbyn. He warned that the Trade Union Bill might “inflame political feelings” and that trade unions were “under fire”.

Lord Watson knows a thing or two about fire and inflaming. In September 2005, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison for arson, after drunkenly starting a fire in an Edinburgh hotel.

A background report said there was a “significant” risk that he could do it again. Luckily for Lord Watson, peers need never stand for re-election.

Vaz by any other name

Meanwhile, in the Commons, MPs were treated to this exchange. Mr Speaker: “Ah! I call Mr Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz.”

Keith Vaz: “Thank you, Mr Speaker, for reminding me of my names.”

Wanted: home for terrorists

I love the comment by the Torquay Conservative councillor, Robert Excell, on learning that “Irish Gerry”, a popular, recently deceased member of the local Conservative club, was a former IRA bomber.

“We don’t want terrorists living in Torquay!” he told the Belfast Telegraph. I don’t suppose most people in Belfast want them living there either.