Budget Day: rolling applause as Rosa Klebb addresses the Supreme Soviet
Reeves has taken a hatchet to the last vestigial prospects of an enterprise Britain.
If you want to view the House of Commons in its most quintessential incarnation, giving free expression to the characteristics that have made it the focus of intense emotions (which it would be indecent to define) on the part of the British public, you could not do better than watch the pantomime of Budget Day.
Although the custom whereby one MP would celebrate the occasion by attiring himself in the style of a Monster Raving Looney Party candidate has been abandoned – probably from fear of incurring censure for “cultural appropriation” – the sober costume of the honourable members does not inhibit them from behaving as clownishly as if they were in carnival dress. For Budget Day is, to MPs of all stripes (the uniform that many of them ought to be wearing), what Easter is to Christians. It is the festival of parliamentary power.