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By Sam Macrory - 14th December 2010
The kettle has boiled over. MPs are gasping for water. The age of the water cannon is nigh.
Well, probably. Theresa May, the home secretary, wasn't quite saying.
The cannon, she told MPs in yesterday’s statement on last Thursday's excitable student protests, "yet to be approved".
Paul Goggins said he didn't "completely rule out the use of water cannon", forgetting perhaps that as an ex-home office minister he no longer makes the decisions.
Tory right winger David TC Davies, a law and order man of the old school, told MPs it was time to "start thinking about the human rights of police officers".
But would May give the boys in blue a water cannon or two to help them protect those rights, asked Labour's Jack Dromey.
Chris Bryant told MPs of his experiences at the wrong end of an "entirely indiscriminate" water cannon.
"I don’t think anyone wants to see it," May told them: not quite a definite no.
Liberal Democrat backbencher Tom Brake got caught up in the confusing use of a plural which is identical to a singular, suggesting the use of "rubber bullet" – surely we can stretch to more than one, even in these austere times – in preference to water cannon.
Ed Balls didn't really know what to say.
The attack on the Royal car was "cowardly and despicable", the protestors will have left people "appalled", but then again the hike in tuition fees was "deeply unfair".
All boxes ticked by the shadow home secretary but none particularly convincingly.
Only one question seemed to stumped May: Balls' query on the number of protestors arrested since last week. The home secretary clearly didn't know the answer.
It was, she declared, a "moving feast", perhaps offering a insight into the mindset of salivating police officers with a grudge to bear.
First in line for the water cannon treatment would have been poor old Charlie Gilmour.
The Cambridge student, would-be model, and son of millionaire Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was photographed wearing his best distressed-military boots as he enthusiastically tugged at a Union flag hanging on the Cenotaph.
Unlike the flag, which held firm in the face of its attacker's muscular efforts, Gilmour Jr was an easy target for MPs.
Though never mentioned by name, the enthusiastic young rioter was repeatedly referred to: Andrew Murrison talked of the need to be "particularly severe on privileged and expensively educated people who should know better".
Tobias Ellwood was delighted to see "a sense of national disgust and outrage at the events on Thursday, particularly the deliberate damage to the Cenotaph"; Charlie Elphicke ranted about the "feral mob intent on riot and desecrating important national symbols such as the Cenotaph".
The home secretary joined in the kicking of poor old Charlie, speaking up for the "the vast majority of the public of this country [who] were dismayed to see a privileged young man desecrate the Cenotaph in that way".
A one-way ticket to the dark side of the moon for that man.
It all got rather excitable: Labour MPs like David Winnick and Jeremy Corbyn offered voices of support for the dissenting protestors and worried about the kettling tactics, but this wasn't in tune with the debate's theme.
Kettles remain in vogue; but water cannon may yet steal the limelight.
Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.
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