The Sketch: Simon Carr

Three very different views of Parliament in a single day. It's that sort of weather.

First: Under the arches of the Palace of Westminster, a thin autumn wind blows about a new young backbencher. "My dear fellow," I talk to him solicitously. "How are you coping? The new job and so forth, the unfamiliar surroundings, the massive loss of prestige, money and spare time?"

He hadn't realised how boring it was going to be, how greasy the pole he was supposed to climb. His solution to the long hours filled with nothing much to do (Committees? No.) was to read poetry. French decadent poetry.

I quoted, rather boastfully: "Obscur et froncé comme un oeillet violet, il respire humblement tapi parmis la mousse." Rimbaud, you know. It's a description of, or an evocation of or a poetic reconstruction of, an anus, and not a female anus (Rimbaud was funny that way).

The young MP was ravished. Rimbaud! It was his special subject. "J'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux," he cried, "et je l'ai trouvée amère, et je l'ai injuriée!" Yes, yes, it goes on: "Je me suis armé contre la justice!"

Call me old-fashioned, but I found it encouraging to be in Westminster discussing a 19th-century description of Verlaine's arsehole (or was it Baudelaire's?) Few new members could construe their incipient bitterness with such delicacy.

Second: At the Spectator awards for parliamentarian of the year, the Home Secretary surpassed himself.

Having recognised the sketchwriters' towering constitutional significance and how they observe the foreign language he speaks, he unburdened himself of this, more or less: "It is time for radical change, to reflect the world and not reject it. To make Parliament the cradle of reflecting ideas. Balancing those checks. Ensuring we can take on board the pressures. The checks and balances that enable people to be able to make a difference."

Translations on a postcard, please; you'll find it easier rendering Rimbaud in Russian. A clue: it's to do with parliamentary reform.

George Galloway, the left-wing backbencher (debater of the year) also recommended parliamentary reform. His opinions the magazine found deplorable but his eloquence admirable. In his acceptance speech he observed: "If Parliament acts like a parliament of poodles whose only job is to perform tricks and bark approval to the ringmaster, they can hardly complain if the top dogs treat them like lamp-posts." A little vulgar, you might feel, compared with Rimbaud's observation of Verlaine, but au point.

And third: in Parliament itself. Presided over by a spoutless teapot of a Speaker, it's often hard to generate much in the way of admiration for it. The scrutiny thing parliament is supposed to do.

But Michael "Creature of the Night" Howard made a good effort to plait the Treasury into Stephen Byers' handling of Railtrack. He didn't quite pull it off, but he did prompt Andrew Smith, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, into a more than usually shameless stream of parliamentary nothingness. The Tories roared. The Speaker reprimanded them: "Let him answer the question!"

Oh yes, do let him. That would be radical. That would drag us all away from our Rimbauds.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com