Westminster’s dancing MPs have stumbled upon a new rock bottom

Kat Brown, The Independent

Another day, another dismay for anyone who would like the people who run the country to try and give us at least the vaguest impression they know what they’re doing. First, the thrusting young diplomat Ameer Kotecha wrote a scorching letter to The Times on why he had left the Foreign Office five months into his new job (being one of several thousand officials “invited to mark World Afro Day” on the day Kabul fell to the Taliban was just one ignominy).

Second, what can only be described as a cohort of MPs from across the party spectrum cheerfully crossed the floor at Portcullis House under the auspices of several Strictly Come Dancing alumni in a group cha-cha-cha. Optics, dear boy, optics. After the many and varied heart attacks that the government’s comms team has experienced in office, the one they had yesterday was at least a cross-party effort.

Kotecha, rather wonderfully, wrote the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Cookbook, and so presumably knows the risks of too many cooks in the kitchen, yet called on the civil service to hire more ex-private sector recruits (like himself, funny that) and for “greater ministerial control over mandarins” — anyone who has followed Kemi Badenoch’s dismal performance on Iran this week will have their heart in their mouth at this point.

I’m afraid to say that I regard Mr Kotecha’s decision as rather unpatriotic. The civil servants I know are very much aware of how the system needs improving — although complaining about lawyers doing their job as Kotecha did does feel a touch Alice Through the Looking Glass — but continue to work for the mission of King and Country, and do so with diligence. One of Kotecha’s complaints in his Times interview was that after war broke out this weekend, the main news on the Foreign Office intranet concerned the “FCDO capability framework and self-assessment”, urging all staff to “take charge of your development”. My friend, welcome to all companies, ever. Intranets do not exist to tell us the news, but that the fourth floor will be closed on Thursday due to necessary deep cleaning following the unfortunate flooding incident. HR departments do not cease their pursuit of our training objectives in recognising spam email simply because war has broken out.

Unfortunately, this does also go both ways, and so to the unedifying sight of a flash mob of MPs cha-cha-cha’ing through Portcullis House. I was less surprised to see Sir Lindsay Hoyle cheek to cheek with Angela Rippon — the man spots a photo opportunity like an owl sights a vole from three fields away — nor indeed to see so many MPs grinning away while carrying out a routine choreographed by Kai from Strictly. To members, a lobbying group of celebrities must possess all the allure that an all-catered Pret lunch holds to the average office worker.

But Your Party MP Zarah Sultana hit the nail on the head when she said, "The optics of MPs doing Strictly Come Dancing in parliament while the world teeters on the brink of World War Three is completely inappropriate." And if anyone knows about bad optics, it’s the woman who boycotted her own party conference. It doesn’t matter if it took place at lunch, at night, or first thing in the morning. Nor that so many Strictly alumni attended (they even got Arlene Phillips). MPs doing anything that doesn’t appear to be backbreaking and faintly hideous elicits the same response in the public as the mere suggestion of working from home does for Nigel Farage: lazy! Wasting our money! Do some proper work.

All that said, there is something mind-bogglingly annoying about all this. MPs dancing simply brings to mind the number of delayed bills that could be being discussed and voted on. The 100 sober women raising their phone lights to the sky in silent tribute to Sarah Everard, murdered five years ago, and with little improvement to women’s safety to show for it. And it gives rise to endless comments of “MPs dance as the Middle East burns”.

There is something powerfully, even palpably irksome about British politicians showing they have zero rhythm. It is a sight so infuriating it seems to trigger a national migraine: think Theresa May wobbling onto her party conference stage, or Boris Johnson lumbering like a collapsing deck chair at his (most recent) wedding. To which you might say, well, maybe they just need lessons. It’s frustrating because, yes, absolutely parliament is another giant company, with a giant intranet, and a giant ancient office held together by asbestos and yellow signs warning about leaking loos. But it is also the picture of democracy, and Britain has been severely shaken by the speed at which democracy has been apparently overturned in the US, hitherto the very seat of Western values. Britons have long held onto a superior idea of being better than everyone else, however laughable this may be. And my word, we do need our MPs to laugh and to be human rather than divisive mouthpieces. Just not en masse in office hours, no matter how tempting a spread is being offered. It only makes it easier for our enemies to score us nil points.