Andy McSmith's Diary: Sorry Sir Simon, you're eight minutes too late for a bullying by John Bercow

PMQs ended with an exchange that would have been meaningless to anyone listening from the public gallery

Simon Burns, Conservative MP for Chelmsford (NHS Employers/Creative Commons)

Prime Minister’s Questions ended with an exchange that would have been meaningless to anyone listening from the public gallery. Sir Simon Burns, a Conservative MP, asked David Cameron whether the Government would legislate to prevent “bullying” in the House of Commons chamber. The Prime Minister replied by pointing out that the time was 12.38.

So what was that about? The Speaker, John Bercow, has many enemies on the Conservative benches, and Sir Simon – who once called him a “sanctimonious dwarf” – is one of the most implacable. After the election, it appeared that Bercow’s relations with the party’s MPs might be improving, but recently they have worsened.

Just over a week ago, the Speaker accused the Business Secretary and rising star Sajid Javid of being “discourteous and incompetent”. During Prime Minister’s Questions the following day, he silenced Chris Philp, the newly elected MP for Croydon South, refusing to allow him to finish a question which he ruled was a waste of time.

Two days earlier, he accused Michael Gove of “chirruping from a sedentary position”. Chirruping seems to be a Bercow word, because on Monday he said of Theresa May’s parliamentary aide, Michael Ellis, that “his loyalist chirruping is unsurpassed”.

Bercow is usually fastidious about MPs’ titles – in July he rebuked the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, for addressing the veteran Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman as an “Honourable Gentleman” when he should have called him a “Right Honourable Gentleman” – but when addressing Sir Simon Burns, the Speaker either omits the title “Sir” or swallows the word so as to make it inaudible.

That was what underlay Sir Simon’s complaint about bullying. Cameron’s retort was that since Sir Simon had been called to speak at 12.38 – eight minutes after Prime Minister’s Questions was supposed to have finished – “he suffers no disadvantage” in that respect.

Vintage Amis snobbery

Martin Amis, the greatly overrated novelist son of the great Kingsley Amis, had an article in the weekend press rubbishing Jeremy Corbyn for being “undereducated”; the piece, presumably, was written from his home in New York.

The BBC’s Daily Politics presenter Andrew Neil, who is not one of nature’s Corbynistas, was unimpressed. He referred to it sarcastically as “a not-at-all snobbish piece”, adding a comment about “criticism from New York-based novelists who think we care about their opinion of British politics”.

Up for a spanking

Dame Diana Rigg, star of the 1960s TV series The Avengers, is definitely not a Corbyn fan. She has told the current issue of Radio Times what she thinks of the Labour leader’s failure to sing the national anthem at a remembrance service.

“Anybody who can’t pay their respects, like the Labour leader, needs his bottom spanking,” she said. I don’t think Corbyn would enjoy that, though there are a few ageing politicians who might.

Spooked by a ghostbuster

The approach of Halloween made me seek news of Rupert Matthews – that lifelong Conservative activist and friend of the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan – who came so close to being a Conservative MEP.

He was next in line to Roger Helmer, the Tory MEP for the East Midlands, who declared his intention to retire in 2011. Conservative HQ stepped in to block Matthews, whereupon a furious Helmer not only refused to retire, but defected to Ukip.

What spooked the Tory apparatus was Matthews’ curious area of expertise. He is a world authority on ghosts. He once ran a course at the International Metaphysical University of West Virginia.

I am delighted to report that he has maintained his interest in the subject, though it killed his political career. Last night in Fareham Library, near Portsmouth, he delivered a scary lecture entitled “The Ghosts of Hampshire”.