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Guys, it’s 108 shopping days till Brexit, and we’re grabbing maces | Marina Hyde

A cancelled vote, a nearly nicked shiny thing – Monday’s debacle was a tour de force in parliamentary faffing

I wonder if a female MP will ever grab the mace, as Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle did on Monday night? Guys, I’m kidding. Of course I don’t wonder that. Grabbing the mace is the parliamentary equivalent of buying a used Boxster and getting a Route 66 tattoo. In my lifetime, the only three persons who have grabbed the mace are cordite-sniffer John McDonnell, this new starlet Russell-Moyle and Michael Heseltine. Draw your own conclusions.

I know Heseltine’s reputation is now so rose-tinted that it has even survived an attempted alsatian-killing, but before he was everyone’s favourite canicidal maniac, he was a serial diva. Even when apparently principled, Heseltine’s embarrassing flounces were the mood music of childhood for political nerds like me. There was the cabinet walkout during Westland – very Downing Street’s Drag Race – then walking off the news because the Belgrano whistleblower was on it with him; then the mace-waving that got him his Tarzan nickname. Face it: grabbing the mace is the ultimate dick move. Welcome to the pantheon, Lloyd! Or the mantheon, whatever.

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