Where was Nigel Farage as John Healey stood up to deliver his inaugural budget in the House of Commons on Wednesday? Either cowering in his office in fear of being duffed up by a rival MP or in self-imposed exile after failing to understand how to reserve a seat, depending on who you believe.
Farage was absent from the chamber after claiming that a rival MP had removed the ‘prayer card’ which is used to reserve a seat for a set-piece occasion in the Commons. In one of the quirks of 21st-century democracy in Britain, the chamber does not have enough seats for every member, so placing a green, dated slip of paper in the slot above a seat before the day’s proceedings begin allows an MP to ensure one.
Farage, though, was absent after claiming someone nicked his and that he feared getting into a bout of fisticuffs were he to argue – although Commons officials have suggested that the Reform leader, who rarely attends Parliament, may have simply not dated his prayer card properly.
Farage said he had decided to give Parliament a “wide berth” as he was concerned he would get into a fight. A similar situation had turned physical on a previous occasion, he claimed (although there appear to be no reports of this happening).
“At the State Opening of Parliament, I got involved in, I didn’t want to, but I got involved in a physical altercation with an MP in the chamber,” he said. “I didn’t make a fuss about it. I didn’t complain.
“But I could see, given that my prayer card had been removed, I was heading towards another physical altercation, and just sometimes, it’s better to avoid conflict, is one reason. Second reason is, actually, I sat going through the budget with the economists in the office line by line.”
But it later emerged that the seat reservation might just have been removed for not being properly stamped with the date.
A House of Commons spokesperson told the Guardian: “There are clear and long-established arrangements for members to reserve their own seats in the chamber using prayer cards displaying a valid date stamp. Today, a prayer card placed on a seat did not display a valid date stamp and was removed in line with the usual chamber protocol.”
Whoops! Might it just be time, after two elections as MP for Clacton (one entirely unnecessary) and 27 months in the job, for Farage to learn what he’s supposed to be doing?
Meanwhile, Reform’s self-styled ‘shadow chancellor’ Robert Jenrick was in the chamber on Wednesday – despite having told journalists earlier in the week that he intended to give it a swerve and watch Cash In The Attic instead. Perhaps Bobby J was forced into a Plan B after discovering that the show was actually cancelled by the BBC 14 years ago.
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