I am not that keen on Mrs Kemi Badenoch, which may help to explain why I am one of the few conservative journalists over the age of 18 who isn’t in the House of Lords. But, goodness, what a silly fuss there has been over her perfectly accurate description of Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson as a ‘spiteful class warrior’.It is hardly the worst political insult of our time, which is probably the great Nye Bevan’s impassioned description of Tories as being ‘lower than vermin’, a cruder and more brutal verbal assault which many Left-wingers still secretly admire.Compared to that, Mrs Badenoch’s barb is mild and not original.Why, in July 2024, just after the election which put Ms Phillipson in charge of England’s schools, I wrote that she ‘has been the chilly public face of the spiteful tax raid on independent schools, one of the nastiest policies Labour has yet publicly admitted to’.The tax was clearly designed to hurt the middle class (the rich don’t care), and to please the Labour militants who hate independent schools precisely because they are independent.Ms Phillipson has also done what she can to weaken protection of free speech in universities. What a silly fuss there has been over Kemi Badenoch's perfectly accurate description of Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson as a ‘spiteful class warrior’, writes Peter HitchensIf the Burnham government goes for state press regulation, which I rather think it might, I doubt very much whether Ms Phillipson will be standing up for the great cause of liberty. I’ll also be surprised if she ever appears, as she has promised to do, in a T-shirt adorned with the words ‘Spiteful Class Warrior’. For, being true, it will not be funny or look witty if she does.But goodness, how much more interesting politics would be if we had more of this sort of thing.For two reasons, I can remember the dry summer of 1976 rather well. It was the year that I finally climbed to the top of the Swindon housing list and lived there in a rather fine council flat. And it was the year I was sent to Coventry, or rather went to work in what was then a strikingly prosperous Midlands industrial city. I remember it being very sunny and dry, but I don’t recall being especially hot myself. I wonder whether it was because I was so much thinner, as most of us were in those days. Many of us have said for years that the extradition treaty between Britain and the USA was heavily biased towards America. I think that’s more or less proven. But now comes news of an American airman, accused of a serious crime against a British woman on British soil, whose case ended up being investigated by US military police and was tried at a US base by a US court-martial. This episode really does make us look like an American colony. Burnham has ideals... but they're wrong Peter Hitchens debated against Andy Burnham at the Cambridge Union in March 2013I thought I had never met Mr Andrew Burnham, our next premier. Then I found out that I had, in fact, debated against him at the Cambridge Union in March 2013.I looked up the recording. He had tried to stand up for the New Labour movement and government of which he had been a part. He went much further than he had to.Fascinatingly, when I attacked the Blair Creature’s Iraq invasion, Mr Burnham rose to his feet to defend it.He absolutely didn’t need to do so. But he did. So maybe he is not the spinning weathercock everyone makes him out to be. Maybe he does in fact have deep, stern principles. But alas, they are the wrong ones. Mr Speaker's curious role in Letby exchange The Commons is not short of blathering frontbenchers who go on and on. Why was a discussion of the Lucy Letby case abruptly ended?Why ever did the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, shut down the Tory shadow leader of the House of Commons, Jesse Norman, on Thursday when he raised the case of Lucy Letby and her increasingly questionable conviction for a supposed mass murder at a Chester hospital?Mr Norman, whose Hereford constituents include Ms Letby’s devastated parents, said: ‘There were no witnesses, no CCTV footage, no forensic evidence and no confession in this case.‘Everything therefore depended on the testimony of experts, but when it came to the defence, in the words of Dame Sue Black,“there were no medical or statistical experts put forward at all.”’ Then he rightly pointed out that deaths in the NHS caused by bad care, rather than inexplicable mass killers with no record of crime, were far from uncommon.He said: ‘Yesterday’s Nottingham University hospitals report is a powerful reminder that in neonatal and maternity settings, grave harm can arise from not only individual malfeasance but systematic clinical failure… If I may conclude, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is now considering the Letby case. May I ask…’But no, he might not ask. Sir Lindsay rather testily shut him up mid-sentence, saying: ‘Order. I have allowed the time. You are a minute over. Please can you conclude now?’Mr Norman replied: ‘I think it is unfortunate that I was not allowed to conclude in the terms that…’ when down came Sir Lindsay again, saying: ‘We will leave it at that. Sorry, but I am not going to be challenged like that. I think that is totally unfair. I gave a full minute and allowed you to continue. I was going to allow you to come back. I would have expected better from the shadow leader of the House than to challenge the chair in that way. I have never had that before.’Well, I don’t know, but it strikes me that the shadow leader of the House might normally expect some latitude from the chair if he wants to finish his point.And the Commons is not short of blathering frontbenchers who go on and on. Why was a discussion of the Letby case abruptly ended?On September 4, 2023, after Ms Letby’s conviction, the Speaker allowed a lengthy exchange between the then Tory health secretary, Steve Barclay, and his Labour shadow, Wes Streeting. Mr Streeting declared: ‘There are simply no words to describe the evil of the crimes that she committed. They are impossible to fathom.’ Nobody stopped him.