Conservative peer Catherine Meyer is facing a three-week suspension from
the House of Lords after a spectacular jolly to Rwanda, during which she managed both to refer to Liberal Democrat Lord Dholakia as “Lord Poppadom” and fiddle with black Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy’s hair without permission.
Meyer said she’d had a long day and a dinner where she drank “possibly three glasses of wine”. But now she’s received the full backing of one of her Tory colleagues – self-styled “brain of Brexit” Daniel Hannan.
“I think it is fair to describe her as a glamorous woman with a direct and charming manner,” Hannan wote in the Daily Telegraph, comparing her treatment to, er, China’s Cultural Revolution under which an estimated one to two million people were killed.
“Different people will inevitably have different ideas about what good manners are,” Hannan fumed. “A Frenchwoman of White Russian descent might see things differently to a former NUS National Black Students’ officer and co-ordinator of the Student Assembly Against Racism.
“In this country… we are sliding into the soft autocracy of pretended solicitousness.” Which may be the case. Or maybe a tipsy woman used a rude name and messed with someone’s hair without asking. Who knows?
