Gobbledegook and Banker-speak: the Reid Plan

When MPs got stuck into debating the economic crisis yesterday a familiar, menacing figure slipped noiselessly into his seat below the gangway and just sat there waiting. Like Mount Vesuvius looming over the Bay of Naples, we knew he was going to erupt eventually. But when - and why? It was John Reid.

The former home secretary-turned-Celtic Football Club chairman has asked a few questions since declining to serve under Gordon Brown last year; this was to be his first speech. Would backbencher Reid back the Brown Bounce or stick his penknife in it, thereby breaching his political Asbo? Up to a dozen MPs were so agog to find out that they stayed in the chamber to listen.

Until the unveiling of what history may yet call the Reid Plan, the afternoon had been marred by nothing more unusual than a sustained assault on the BBC. It covered everything from the corporation's abuse of its local news monopoly and senior executive salaries to its feeble digital signal in the Vale of York and the Russell Brand affair.

It quickly became clear that Brand and Jonathan Ross are loathed by middle-aged MPs even more than BBC pay rates. So they piled in behind Tory John Whittingdale on the "torrent of bad language" he almost certainly hadn't heard on Radio 2. Labour's Denis MacShane, a former BBC man himself, got so carried away he complained it was wall-to-wall "eff, eff, eff, eff, eff" on all stations, including the effing weather forecast and Blue Effing Peter. "Please tell the BBC, please tell Ofcom, you don't hear that in France, you don't hear that in Germany, you don't hear it in America. Why has British broadcasting got to be in the linguistic sewer of our great language?" asked the excited MP.

That was silly, as multilingual MacShane should know. The German Jamie Oliver doesn't use the F-word. He swears in German when he goes on TV to urge healthier eating habits (more fried food) in Bavaria. The French Russell Brand assaults revered actors' grandchildren live on cable porn. The American one shoots them.

At 3.01 precisely Whittingdale's mobile phone went off (twice) prompting Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem creep-of-the-week, to advise Mr Speaker to copy the Lord Mayor of Leeds and fine councilors for mobile crime. "I have no powers," said the Speaker, who has problems enough already.

John Reid then had to sit through the Lib Dems' economic debate. This gave Vince Cable, their shadow chancellor, 20 minutes to explain how brilliant he has been and Angela Eagle, the duty Treasury minister, 20 minutes to duck Vince's brilliant technical questions.

Ken Clarke, John Redwood, Susan Kramer and Phil Hammond, deputizing for George Osborne (believed lost at sea), piled in to bully Ms Eagle by showing they could use long words too. It was nothing to what followed when the nation's ex-jailer rose to join in.

If Reid had offered to raid the banks and send them all to Belmarsh until we get our money back no one would have turned a hair. Instead he launched into a Brand-like torrent of banker-speak, designed to restore inter-bank liquidity by cutting counter-party management of friction costs and other current ills. The only easy bit came when he praised the PM. Gobbledegook from Bruiser Reid? Leadership bid!