The House of Commons should be sitting into the middle of the night – so why are MPs knocking off at 3pm?

Like torturously bored shop assistants, MPs are trying to ‘look busy’ but failing spectacularly

When the House of Commons rises for the day, the serjeant at arms strides down the chamber in his ceremonial tights, picks up the mace and carries it out over his shoulder. The BBC Parliament channel cuts to the clock above the speaker’s chair and the picture fades to black.

It is a piece of both real and televisual ritual that recalls the BBC’s old tradition of playing the national anthem in the small hours before shutting down.

And in these rarefied days, this ritual should be occurring in the middle of the night. But it’s not. On Wednesday, the House of Commons rose not at 3am but 3pm. The chamber was open for business for just over three hours. The same will happen again on Thursday.

The week after next is scheduled for the parliamentary half-term recess (yes, MPs still like to keep to the school calendar). But it’s not, because it’s been decided they have too much to do. If Brexit is to happen on 29 March, hundreds upon hundreds of bits of legislation need to be passed. Most people with even the faintest knowledge of procedural matters make clear that it almost certainly cannot be done.

And yet, this week, there is no legislation at all scheduled to go through the House of Commons. Afternoon “general debates”, which is to say pointless debates, on sport, on “beer taxation” and on antisocial behaviour have been scheduled. Meanwhile, some MPs are seeking taxpayer-funded compensation for their cancelled half-term family holidays. This might irk some readers, but MPs do not earn astronomical wages, and family holidays are not cheap.

There is so much madness around at the moment it is almost not worth bothering to record this comparatively minor aspect of it. But it is part of the wider madness that is fully pretend politics.

The UK is currently spending £4bn preparing for a no-deal Brexit which neither the government, nor the opposition, nor the European Union wants. It is doing so to convince the EU it is serious about no deal, so as to strengthen its negotiating position in negotiations that are over. And even when they were not over, in October 2017, the then Brexit secretary David Davis thought nothing of standing at the despatch box and saying, “the maintenance of the no-deal option is for negotiating reasons.” In other words, he was happy to say, in public, his EU interlocutors within earshot, that no deal is, very obviously, a bluff.

Now we have a House of Commons too frightened of public perception to take their half-term break, but nevertheless sitting around with nothing to do. Now, it may be that nothing can be done until Theresa May comes back from Brussels with a deal that can get through the Commons, but both sides appear to be united that advantage will come their way the closer we get to that very last minute.

In the meantime, they twiddle their thumbs. Anyone who’s ever worked in a shop will know that there are few things more torturous than being made to “look busy” when there is simply nothing to do. That is where we are, and the House of Commons is not fooling anyone. There is nothing for them to do but Brexit, the public implores them to “get on with it.” There is, simultaneously, unimaginably vast amounts to be getting on with, but an entirely empty to-do list.

It’s complete madness, but it’s been that way for a while.