It wasn’t clear why the PM was missing for the three-hour debate as Steve Barclay listened. Intently
Leaves on the line? A pang of guilt for having flown back from Cop26 in a private jet to get back in time for dinner with Charles Moore at the Garrick Club? A longstanding visit to a Newcastle hospital that had been in the diary since at least nine o’clock that morning? A three-hour search for the mask he had forgotten to bring with him to the hospital?
Whatever the reason, Boris Johnson was conveniently out of town for the three-hour debate on parliamentary standards that the Speaker had granted at the end of the previous week. Under normal circumstances, it would have been Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the house, who deputised for the disappearing Boris. After all, it was house business, and Rees-Mogg was sitting on the government frontbenches, primed and pumped.
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