The Privileges Committee was back, and this time it was personal. Two weeks after the blockbuster debate on Boris Johnson, we were watching a new episode, with MPs debating a report into the behaviour of some of his supporters.

Those accused of being naughty were spread along the Conservative benches, along with a few supporters. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg lounged at the far end, his transformation into stereotype Dickens villain almost complete. Michael Fabricant sat behind the government front bench, his tousled and miraculously youthful hair giving the impression of a schoolboy accused of scrumping apples. Brendan Clarke-Smith, who had boycotted the last debate in order to watch the cricket, had turned up this time, presumably because the third Ashes test was already over. There was no sign, sadly, of Nadine Dorries, who is in a quantum state of uncertainty as an MP, having announced her resignation but not actually resigned. 

As with many sequels, this one was less interesting than the original. When Rees-Mogg called the committee a “kangaroo court” and Clarke-Smith said it was a “witch hunt which would put a banana republic to shame”, were they attacking the work of colleagues? When Dorries suggested its members must have been promised safe seats and honours, was she implying that they might in some way be corrupt? 

This, according to Parliamentary rules, is not on. MPs are supposed to wait for the Privileges Committee to report before they denounce it. Penny Mordaunt, in her capacity as Leader of the Commons, made a brief speech in almost a monotone, explaining this. There were, she said, routes for members who were worried about a committee to express that view. Amazingly, it turns out that none of these involve slagging it off on GB News, as Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel had both done.  

Rees-Mogg in his defence, suggested that the attacks on his behaviour were motivated by jealousy at his GB News show. Perhaps that’s right, and Harriet Harman dreams of the day when she can discuss whether vaccines are a war crime in front of an audience of hundreds. 

His speech was long and, in the words of Mordaunt later, “pettifogging”. As he trotted through parliamentary precedents going back to the seventeenth century it was clear that, in his own mind, he was Edward Marshall Hall met with Cicero, marvelling us all with his argument that black was white and up was down. The sad reality is that his speech was a reminder that to him all of this has always been a game. 

Like his fellow accused, Rees-Mogg was outraged that he had been attacked by the committee without having had a chance to defend himself. This was a fair-ish point, although it cuts both ways: members of the Privileges Committee weren’t allowed to respond when he called them “a political committee against Boris Johnson.”

But it turned out they’d misunderstood this. “I had absolutely no desire to impugn the integrity of individual members of the Committee, some of whom I hold in very high regard,” he claimed. Mark Jenkinson took a similar line, claiming, without ever really explaining, that his accusation of a “witch hunt” had been misunderstood. Perhaps he’d been talking about the National Theatre’s production of The Crucible.

There was more in this vein. Clarke-Smith said how much he respected the witch hunters, and thanked them for their work. Dame Andrea Jenkyns, perhaps hoping for the mercy of the court, gave a plausible impression of someone who simply didn’t understand what she was supposed to have done wrong. 

Johnson has fled the scene, but his influence lives on

Rees-Mogg quoted the case of Samuel Plimsoll, who had been forced to apologise to the Commons over an attack on another MP. But, he revealed, Plimsoll had been campaigning for ship safety standards, and an idea that would save hundreds of lives. Perhaps, he was implying, trying to get Boris Johnson off a charge of lying was a bit like trying to save sailors from drowning. Grateful sailors put up a monument to Plimsoll on the Embankment. Mogg has, I suppose, already had his knighthood from Johnson. 

Others spoke in defence of the committee. Harman’s eyes welled with tears as Tory MP Laura Farris thanked her for her hard work and dedication. Sir Charles Walker spoke of the values and behaviour that marked good MPs from poor ones. “In this place, we are judged not by how we handle our successes, but by how we cope with our disappointments,” he said. 

“A little leaven leavens the whole lump,” Rees-Mogg had said at one point, quoting the letter to the Galatians for some reason. A line a couple of verses earlier seems more relevant: “Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” We know the answer to that, of course. Johnson has fled the scene, but his influence lives on.