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<\/p>\nWhen Suella Braverman used to arrive on the Commons frontbench, electric lightbulbs flickered, distant dogs howled and clouds scudded across a silvery moon. James Cleverly, her successor as Home Secretary, is a more emollient, centrist soul. That is not the same as saying he projects determination to get much done.<\/p>\n
He arrived for his first Home Office questions after a bumpy few days. First he had been caught by Commons microphones saying a rude word, either about the fine town of Stockton or (as he claims) about its uninspiring Labour MP. Then he gave a newspaper interview in which he tiptoed away from the Government’s plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda.<\/p>\n
You will have been following these matters more closely than I but the Supreme Court apparently said it would contravene immigrants’ human rights to force them to travel to Kigali by Queasyjet.<\/p>\n
Top judges are firmly of the view that foreign travel should be first-class or nothing. United Nations rapporteurs are with them on this. You will seldom find a UN rapporteur in goat class.<\/p>\n
Mr Cleverly’s newspaper-interview shimmy away from Rwanda did not go down well with all Conservative backbenchers, but in the chamber none went so far as to attack him. You could sense they were not gruntled. But they were not yet ready to pull the lavatory chain on him.<\/p>\n
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Cleverly’s newspaper-interview shimmy away from Rwanda did not go down well with all Conservative backbenchers, but in the chamber none went so far as to attack him<\/p>\n
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When Suella Braverman used to arrive on the Commons frontbench, electric lightbulbs flickered, distant dogs howled and clouds scudded across a silvery moon<\/p>\n
Jill Mortimer (Con), magnificently red-robed MP for Hartlepool, wanted human rights treaties renegotiated. Hear-hears from her Tory colleagues. Jonathan Gullis (Con, Stoke North) was fed up with delays to the Rwanda policy. James Morris (Con, Halesowen and Rowley Regis), another whose patience was fraying, provoked titters from Labour’s frontbench by asking Mr Cleverly: ‘What is our policy?’<\/p>\n
Mr Cleverly, a few feet away on the government frontbench, fiddled with his ballpoint pen. To be fair, he is quite good at this. He has mastered the art of twiddling a Biro on his thumb so that it revolves at speed without falling to the floor. He is the sort of boy who at school could make his yo-yo do a loop-the-loop.<\/p>\n
It may take greater dexterity to keep the Sunak government’s immigration policy spinning at the same speed.<\/p>\n
Watching from a safe distance: Tom Tugendhat, security minister. He had entered with hands in pocket, chewing something. There is something semi-detached about Mr Tugendhat. He may feel he himself should be home secretary.<\/p>\n
Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, throws herself at Tory home secretaries the way certain Jack Russells will chase and yap at passing Royal Mail delivery vans.<\/p>\n
Her two questions, thuddingly abusive, were found by forensic scientists to contain not a single trace of policy. Mr Cleverly, after watching Yvette wobble her head and yack-yack-yack, shimmered to the despatch box and said he admired her ‘enormously’. Sir Desmond Swayne (Con, New Forest West): ‘Noooooo!’<\/p>\n
Mr CLEVERLY left many questions on immigration to Robert Jenrick, a ministerial colleague. Jenrick is Solid. Stephen Kinnock, for Labour, put it about that Mr Jenrick was ‘on resignation watch’.<\/p>\n
Mr Jenrick licked his lips a bit at that but made a decent show of loyalty to his new boss. Mr Cleverly was by now sitting with his two knuckles pressed down on the leather bench. At one point in proceedings, I think I saw him mouth a word that rhymes with ‘rowlocks’.<\/p>\n
Later there was a cross set of exchanges between the Stockton man and Mr Cleverly. The minister stayed pretty calm under fire. Orderlies were called to sedate the Stockton man and usher him away for a week at a cure-home in Baden-Baden.<\/p>\n
So is Cleverly a good choice for Home Secretary? Too early to say.<\/p>\n
He is not dogmatic. Yet he has a lightness of touch \u2013 evident in his breezy put-down of a gormless question from the Lib Dems’ Richard Foord \u2013 that the House enjoyed. Many found Suella hard to like. It may not be enough, but Mr Cleverly is hard to dislike.<\/p>\n