Champion of the briny, a veritable Captain Haddock

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail
Updated: 03:15 EST, 17 January 2012

View
comments

Becalmed: Michael Gove found himself defending plans for a Royal Yacht during education questions

Education Questions and the House was becalmed. MPs were meant to be discussing primary school numbers for the next decade. Suddenly, bizarrely, they had a ding-dong about the royal yacht (or lack of one, to be more precise).

Michael Gove, Education Secretary, has not previously struck me as a sea dog. He has always looked the sort of Herbert who would feel queasy at the first sign of a swell when crossing the Mersey. You would not choose to stand downwind of M. Gove on deck after one of those breakfasts on the Sealink to Calais.

Anyway, primary schools. Alec Shelbrooke (Con, Elmet & Rothwell) had raised them. Earnest discussion briefly ensued. The next moment, without warning, it was broadsides and flashes of cutlass as the two frontbenches clashed about a replacement for Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.

Shadow Secretary of Education Stephen Twigg rose to the poop deck and asked Mr Gove how many primary school places he could buy with the sums he proposed to splurge on a new royal yacht.

It should be explained that it had come to light in yesterday’s newspapers that Mr Gove is pressing 10 Downing Street to support plans for the commissioning of a new royal yacht. The Blair Government got rid of the last such yacht and made the Queen cry.

Many of us think it would be a capital idea for the Queen’s tears to be blotted, this Jubilee year, with the news of a replacement yacht.

Up on the bridge of public life, Mr Midshipman Gove has taken a squint through the telescope and has espied political opportunities ahoy. ‘Full sail ahead, Cap’n!’ he has cried to Commodore Cameron.

More from Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail...

What has a new yacht got to do with the Department of Education? Er, not much. Mr Gove yesterday attempted some unconvincing stuff about how a royal yacht could provide learning experiences for apprentices, etc. Likely tale! What is going on here is something more political and possibly more connected to wider ambitions.

We are invited to imagine this bookish Gove, this splay-footed, twirly-worded, hand-flapping son of Aberdeen as a salty habitue of the ocean wave. He may in the past have come across as a genial Gladys. No more! Now we are presented with a champion of the briny, a veritable Captain Haddock. Or Birdseye, given the recent spherification of his tum-tum.
Is ‘spherification’ a word? If not, it should be.

Labour MPs were dubious about the idea of a new yacht. Tom Blenkinsop (Lab, Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland), who does his best to be glum, complained about reductions in public spending on the youngsters of his constituency. He asked, in a tone as sour as cider apples: ‘Are they less of a spending priority than a royal yacht?’

Now we had Mr Twigg steaming over the horizon. Hello sailor? Not a bit of it. Mr Twigg sent out hostile signals to nautical proselytiser Gove. He indicated that primary schools would be a more deserving recipient of public money than any royal yacht.

Mr Gove was having none of this. He told Mr Twigg that he should ‘navigate out of rocky waters’ and noted that he (Gove) was against the use of any public loot being spent on a yacht. He simply wanted to record his support for the project, should it be paid for privately.

A new royal yacht could create ‘opportunities for disadvantaged youth to take part in exciting new adventures!’ he cried. He hoped that the Labour benches would desist from their complaints. ‘Let’s have less rumbling from the ratings who want to mutiny below the deck!’ One’s mind filled with images of bilge pumps.

All this was the highlight of Labour’s day. The Opposition benches were lamentably empty and its MPs looked depressed, having been robbed, by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, of the chance to complain credibly about the Government’s cuts. We may be hearing a good deal more about the royal yacht in future days.