Treasury Questions and Torsten Bell was in da building! Little Torsten is that London think-tanker who used to pop up on BBC programmes as an allegedly non-partisan commentator. Now he is Labour MP for lucky, lucky Swansea West and a minister at both the Treasury and Pensions.
To picture his entrance it helps to have seen a Lipizzaner stallion in action, hooves lifted, gaskins quivering in a bid for groomed perfection. Mr Bell, 43, sat alongside Treasury colleagues: young Dan Tomlinson, cold Lucy Rigby, mortuary attendant James Murray and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, or what is left of her. She has acquired a tic in the left eye and her smiles have become unpredictable. They dazzle or disappear without obvious pattern or cause. You wouldn’t trust a proctologist whose moods fluctuated so randomly, glum one moment, snapping on her latex gloves the next with shouts for another drum of Vaseline.
Back to Brother Torsten, allegedly the Starmer Government’s economic brains. He shimmered and beamed, all smirks and pensive frowns. To his right hunched the cadaverous Murray, luminous, morose. Yet Mr Bell was bursting with rosy delight.
When Labour MPs spoke they soon found themselves being nodded at by Torsten. He swivelled and gazed intently at them, lips pursed in a ‘jolly good, that man or woman’ sort of way. A little patronising.
One small setback for our hero was that Mr Tomlinson, ten years his junior and newer to the Treasury, saw more of the action. It was Mr Tomlinson who, in calm detail, answered questions on business rates; it was Mr Tomlinson who was left, all too readily by nerves-shot Rachel, to field queries about the farms tax. And he did so pretty deftly. A soft voice, a touch of self-deflating charm; skilful with Mr Speaker, too.
Some question about work incentives finally brought Mr Bell swaggering to the despatch box. The tip of his nose kept wrinkling. A rabbity touch. His answer was an anti-Conservative rant and contained, four times, the shouted phrase ‘the party opposite’. His voice squeaked and his left arm waved as he tried to impart his unconvincing disgust. As he returned to his seat after this peculiar outburst he puffed out his chest and looked at his backbenchers. From what one could gather, they did not seem much interested in him.
While other ministers spoke, Mr Bell fiddled with his left ear or eyebrow and stroked, lovingly, his girlishly smooth throat. At one point he seemed to start heckling Ms Reeves but I suppose he was merely hoping to show support for the sorry cabbage. He leaned forward, flicked his quiffy fringe and sought to involve himself in discussions as to which minister should answer which topical question. Ms Reeves, nominally in charge, sat in a dazed puddle.
Given another chance to shine, Mr Bell slagged off Reform UK as a ‘bunch of crazies’. He had some slogan about this being a ‘government backing the builders month after month after month’. He was still shouting it as he strolled back to this place.
Should Sir Keir come a cropper, what will happen to Torsten? He is, to use a Shakespearean term (though not in its sottish sense), a tosspot: v. pleased with himself, yet with little cause to be so. New party leaders always need ways to boost morale. Giving tosspot Torsten the heave-to might cheer up the troops immensely. And how richly deserved. The subtler, softer Dan Tomlinson is in a different parliamentary class.
Another master of artful delicacy was Gavin Robinson, leader of the DUP. During an urgent question about the IRA double-agent known as Stakeknife, Mr Robinson commended much of what the security services did during the Troubles. He also had a whack at Dublin for its scurvy support for Republican terrorism over the years. This was all the stronger for the quietness with which it was done. Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn, by comparison, sounded milky in his defence of our realm.
