In January 2017

Majority of Cabinet wanted Trump banned from addressing UK parliament

In January 2017, days after Trump’s inauguration, twelve current Cabinet ministers put their names to an early day motion (EDM) that “calls on the Speaker, Lord Speaker, Black Rod and Serjeant at Arms to withhold permission from the Government for an address to be made in Westminster Hall, or elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster, by President Trump”...

The motion was signed by Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, the science secretary, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, Jo Stevens, the Welsh secretary and Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, was a signatory and co-sponsor of the motion.

I'd forgotten this stunt, but what the blue blazes did they think they were doing?

It was infantile then and feels even more infantile now. Something Guardian readers might propose, but not a stunt MPs should stoop to. Yet they did, lots of them, MPs who presumably took and still do take themselves seriously. 

It's a reminder. Describing Keir Starmer's Cabinet as a 'rabble' isn't wildly inappropriate. Should be but isn't.