Up close and personal: parliament caught looking gorgeous on camera

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/04/parliament-caught-camera-inside-commons

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TV reporter Michael Cockerell has been making lovingly crafted films about politics and politicians for more than 30 years and very good at it he is too, but Cockerell must move with the times and so must MPs. Their trade is viewed with disdain veering towards hatred among large swaths of the electorate with the result that Tuesday night’s Inside the Commons on BBC2 was notably defensive about the place.

Not hard to see why. The confident mid-Victorians rebuilt the burned-out medieval Palace of Westminster as a palace and it still looks like one, albeit one that needs a lot of maintenance, as elderly buildings and people do. It took just 29 minutes of the hour-long programme – the first of four – before someone ( Charles Kennedy actually) drew attention to the pink ribbons on MPs’ coat hooks, there to allow them to hang their swords.

Some people love that sort of detail (I quite enjoy a harmless gesture to the distant past myself), but others hate it, sincerely believing it is just the kind of backward thinking that has held back this country, high-speed Wi-Fi, high-speed trains, mitochondrial donations and all. Charming or cringe-making?

Confident enough to reduce his own presence to reading his script, largely unseen (unlike some, eh!), Cockerell still has to compromise: he clearly loves politics but prudently has to keep his distance. Many of the MPs he interviews are self-consciously playing to the hostile end of the public gallery too. Isn’t the shouting awful at PMQs ? Aren’t the voting lobbies outdated when we could all vote electronically?

So Cockerell notes that the Speaker’s office is “grand,” the cafeteria breakfasts “cut-price” ( no rent to pay) and the whole place has the outdated feel of a “Victorian gentlemen’s club.” Well yes, but also no. The introspective grandeur of parliament was fast fading when I first got a press gallery ticket in the mid-70s. It has long since disappeared. What Cockerell’s camera crew vividly captures are gorgeous shots of the fabric of the palace: the bustle, the chat, the shiny surface but not the grind, the frequent tedium of committee life or gnawing job insecurity in an age of de-aligned voting habits.

What is also hard to encapsulate on film is rapid evolution, Cockerell does his best using the splendidly bewhiskered clerk of the Commons, Sir Robert Rogers , a cheery Father Christmas figure, to embody the tension between tradition and the need for less paper and better Wi-Fi. Rogers, whose early retirement was announced but not explained in last night’s film ( too many rows with Speaker Bercow?) , is heard saying: “History should be our inspiration, not our gaoler.” Quite so.

What has driven change in recent decades? Technology, the tyranny of 24/7 media, email and mobile phones. Europe and Holyrood. An over-mighty executive which needs to be held to account ( progress better since 2010), the expenses scandal and family friendly hours, which usually end the official day by 7pm. Above all, I would contend, the arrival of female MPs in large numbers. It curbs laddish daftness in all social classes.

Cockerell used two camera-friendly and combative Class of 2010 newcomers, Bristol Tory, Charlotte (“I have always been angry … about injustice”) Leslie , and Rotherham byelection winner, Labour’s Sarah Champion , to steer viewers through hurdles such as PMQs. Champion’s ambitious goal is to amend the 2014 justice bill to make a single attempt at child-grooming a criminal offence. She gets there in the end and David Cameron stops to say: “ Well spoken,” as he passes her on camera. He is a child of the TV age: he gets it.

The film shows interaction between MPs and officials, much more egalitarian than in the old days, which is accurate enough. It also shows Nicholas Soames , a Churchill dynast and holdover from the old ruling class, calling tearoom supremo, Gladys Dickson, elderly, hymn-singing and black, “just the most adorable woman”. The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston wonders here if she reciprocates.

But as a traditional Tory, heir to deep reserves of class confidence, Soames is one of very few MP interviewees who does not genuflect to assumed voter hostility. Thus Sir Peter Tapsell, Father of the House and 85 this week, deplores the “personal insults” traded between Cameron and Ed Miliband. It wouldn’t have happened 25 years ago, he says. His memory plays him false. Margaret Thatcher could be very offensive.

Self-parodying young fogey, Jacob Rees-Mogg – a mere 45 – is on stronger ground defending noisy PMQs as “ the theatre of politics”, a necessary safety valve. He has a point, it’s like the football terraces, as are the tribal corners of the tearoom, which some MPs are seen deploring. There are places in a football stadium where the visiting team’s supporters don’t sit either. Plenty of workplaces, few as grand as Westminster, have their little habits.

Will Cockerell’s gentle film have deepened public understanding, softened the destructive hostility, which is, in large measure, not warranted, even in hard times? I doubt it. Inside the Commons is unlikely to have been watched by viewers who might most have benefited, it’s the politics addicts – including the haters – who tune in to validate their fears and hopes, I was struck the last time I quoted an expert on myths about MPs how few of the haters even try to engage with expertise.

Never mind. Last night the real-life Commons voted by a cross-party majority of 382 to128 to authorise the use of mitochondrial donations to help create “ three-person babies” born without cruel disorders, the first such legislature to do so. Those who know about these issues will be quietly grateful at the prospect of much unhappiness eradicated. Most people won’t notice. That’s life, that’s politics. As my expert told MPs in January, if you want to be loved, change your job – or buy a dog.