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Andy McSmith's Diary: Who are you calling Zac Goldsmith?

One Labour MP launched a formal protest David Cameron mentioned the London mayoral candidate by name

Andy McSmith
Wednesday 27 January 2016 22:21 GMT
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Zac Goldsmith was chosen as the Tory London Mayoral candidate
Zac Goldsmith was chosen as the Tory London Mayoral candidate

Parliament has some curious customs, one of which is that MPs never address each other by name, but only by such terms as “the honourable member”, or “right honourable member” when referring to a member of the Privy Council, or “my honourable friend” when it is someone from the same political party. But David Cameron got so carried away with excitement thinking about the forthcoming mayoral election in London that he referred to “Zac Goldsmith, who would make an excellent mayor”, when Goldsmith is currently the MP for Richmond.

Believe it or not, this prompted a formal protest from the Labour MP Christian Matheson, the honourable member for the City of Chester. “The Prime Minister referred to the honourable member for Richmond Park by his first name,” he wailed. “The Prime Minister has been disrespectful to the House and to its procedures in seeking electoral advantage for the Conservative Party!” Addressing the Speaker, he added: “I wonder whether you concur with that, Sir, and I seek your advice on how we might upbraid the Prime Minister for that discourtesy.”

The Speaker, John Bercow, was calm in the face of this dreadful breach of procedure, saying: “The honourable gentleman has rather magnified the issue by raising it in this way.”

The champion of the bank

The Financial Times reports that Beijing is unimpressed by the appointment of Sir Danny Alexander, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as head of communications at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, because of his dearth of experience in international finance.

Don’t they know that Sir Danny has spent years doing communications work? Immediately before his election as a Lib Dem MP in 2005, he was head of communications for the Cairngorms National Park Authority. Before that, he did the same job for the Britain in Europe campaign for eight years, and once organised a press conference to which my colleague Andrew Grice turned up, and discovered that he was the only journalist in the room. That is the experience he brings to his new role as vice-president of an institution with £70bn to lend.

Pot kettle, Rupert?

For a really sound opinion on the Google tax row, where better to turn than the Twitter feed of Rupert Murdoch. “Google et al broke no tax laws,” the old boy writes. “Now paying token amounts for PR purposes. Won’t work. Need strong new laws to pay like the rest of us.” Subsequently, he added: “Google has cleverly planted dozens of their people in White House, Downing St, other governments. Most brilliant new lobbying effort yet.” Spoken like a trouper, Rupe.

Check your Rightmove!

And for making a silly comment on a serious matter, the SNP’s Pete Wishart takes the wooden spoon. The £130m Google agreed to pay would “barely buy you a spare room” in David Cameron’s Witney constituency, he told the BBC’s World at One programme. Actually, you could buy a small terraced house in Witney for one-thousandth of that sum.

Oakeshott bets on Green

Having resigned the Lib Dem whip because he had no faith in Nick Clegg, wealthy peer Matthew Oakeshott spread his money around before the general election, donating to the campaigns of 30 Labour and 15 Lib Dem candidates – 40 out of 45 of whom lost. He also backed Green MP Caroline Lucas, who won, and evidently thought that a good investment, as the latest Register of Members Interests shows that he donated another £25,000 towards the Greens campaign to keep Britain in the EU.

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