Quentin Letts
‘The only one he was interested in spearing, in KILLING, was Boris’
PETULANT and patronising, Prime Minister. David Cameron used Westminster’s bully pulpit to belittle Boris Johnson. In the vacuum pod of the Commons it worked. Mr Cameron won cheers, laughter from the Labour benches – yes, Labour – while Mr Johnson muttered ‘rubbish’ several times.
Opposition MPs cried ‘more! more! more!’ Mr Cameron looked exceedingly pleased with himself. Creamy self-pleasure. ‘That’s shown Boris!’ he may have thought.
But out in the nation? Beyond the chi-chi citadel – in those provincial fens where few can hope to swoosh to Strasbourg and Brussels on bring-your-squeeze freebies – such Commons barbs will make sparse impact.
The lasting effect may only be to stir Mayor Johnson’s competitive juices. He must now know he is in a fight and will need to campaign with all his ardour for the ‘Leave’ vote. Mr Cameron has made it stingingly, nastily personal.
Tory leader in name alone – not now in spirit, nor possibly ever again – Mr Cameron came to the House to tell MPs about his European negotiation.
He entered the House shortly before 3.30pm. A few of his trusties expressed vocal acclaim at the sight of him. Many more sat in silence.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband turned up. George Osborne slunk in (to total silence from his side – he walks these days with the gait of a fox).
No Gove or Whittingdale or Patel, to name three of the Cabinet ‘Leave EU’ gang. They had stayed away but Iain Duncan Smith was standing in his normal place near the double doors.
Mr Cameron did some looking round at his benches, doing emphatic chin-drops to drudges he wished to encourage.
Let them see that he had spotted them, acknowledge them, show a manly gesture of pumped lips and a tweak of the head: he is clever at this sort of thing. He even engaged Commons Leader Chris
Grayling in conversation. Leave-man Grayling is the sort of ruminant Mr Cameron would happily ignore at a drinks party.
When long-standing Tory Eurosceptics challenged him, Mr Cameron treated them with a modicum of weary civility. The only one he was interested in spearing, in KILLING, was Boris.
Lord knows what words and promises passed between the two of them in recent weeks but the hatred, on Mr Cameron’s part, is now naked. Peevish. It leaves a metallic tang on the tongue. First, he mocked Mr Johnson’s floating of the idea that a Leave vote will bring the over-mighty EU to its senses and secure a better future for Britain. ‘I have known a number of couples who have begun divorce proceedings,’ he said, rolling the words round the front of his mouth, ‘but I do not know any who have begun divorce proceedings in order to renew their marriage vows.’
This won, from Labour, a bark of laughter the like of which I have not heard since the day Geoffrey Howe attacked Mrs Thatcher.
A barb about divorce – aimed at the libidinous Boris? This was more than tart. It was gratuitously personal.
With an angry tremor in his voice, Mr Cameron said ‘I am not standing for reelection. I have no other agenda than what is best for our country.’ He said he would speak up for his country ‘for the next four months’ – an acceptance, perhaps, that his premiership is in peril.
The simplest MP grasped that Mr Cameron was, with these words, accusing his opponent of greedy ambition.
He was saying that Boris had ‘an agenda’. He was playing the man, not that rugby ball that Boris once mentioned.
For a Prime Minister to impute low motives to a senior colleague – particularly one who had gone out of his way to praise him on Sunday – and to do so from the parliamentary pill-box: this was scintillatingly, recklessly vicious, a rare public glimpse of Cameron the crass autocrat.
The Tory benches behind? They did not like it. Not since Moses did his trick with the Red Sea has there been such salt-sour division.
‘A rare glimpse of Cameron the crass autocrat’