Why Chris Clarkson was right to ask Angela Rayner to apologise for calling him ‘scum’ but wrong to send an officious and pompous letter

The fur is well and truly flying in the Commons. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, yesterday called a Conservative MP, Chris Clarkson, “scum” in the chamber. It’s been action stations since – and today another Tory MP lambasted Rayner again for her words.

Rayner was definitely in the wrong. She knows it and has since apologised. She almost certainly knew it at the time from the reaction of the Deputy Speaker, Dame Eleanor Laing. An amiable woman, Dame Eleanor was the picture of cold fury in the chamber as she immediately told Rayner never to use such language again.

But now I’m on Rayner’s side.

First, Clarkson sent a pompous, officious full page letter to her, which he also (shock!) decided to publish online.

From his lofty quotation of Victorian Parliamentary procedure manual Erskine May, to his clumsy shoehorning of an attack on Labour’s coronavirus policy, to the publication of his letter online, he wanted not just redress but humiliation.

Then today in the chamber, Shaun Bailey rose from the green benches today to inform the House about some disgraceful abuse his mother had received down the phone at 11.30pm yesterday. The person on the end of the line used the “type of word” Rayner had, he said. So Bailey, face scrunched in fury, demanded Rayner apologise “not just to us, but to my mum as well”. Well, I’m sorry about his mother, but how ridiculous.

No sane person would deny what happened to Bailey’s mother was wrong. Who, though, would say Angela Rayner is responsible for someone calling up other people’s mothers in the middle of the night?

The invocation of mothers in politics is a delicate art. Bailey would do better to copy his last but one party leader, David Cameron. He ventriloquized his mum at the despatch box and lambasted Jeremy Corbyn for not wearing a proper suit or doing up his tie. Corbyn soon dropped a thirty year habit and re-emerged as a smart suited socialist. That’s real mum power.

The whole row now reminds me of nothing more than a football match. We’ve all seen it: one player takes a clattering but then performs gymnastic rolls that would make Simone Biles jealous. They’ve been hurt, yes, but – that much?

Could Clarkson not have written more simply and said ‘that was wrong, say sorry’? And could Bailey not have saved his anger for the abusive caller, instead of demanding another apology in the House? No, the outrage train must rumble on.

That’s the game, of course. But it wouldn’t hurt to treat the audience like adults, either.