The PM tonked Corbyn to the ropes
FOR a woman supposedly on the rack, Theresa May had a carefree outing at Prime Minister’s Questions. She tonked Jeremy Corbyn to the boundary ropes. The Tory backbenchers cheered her hard (some out of guilt, perhaps).
The PM gesticulated and pointed like a Maltese traffic cop. She clenched her fists, leaned back from the despatch box, shut her folder and spoke in a way that at least sounded extempore.
Mr Corbyn had ‘brought Momentum to his own party but would bring stagnation to the country’ if he ever got into power. Cue ecstatic cheers from her rebellious Tory troops. They were almost whimpering with gratitude. Lead us, heavenly mother, lead us. Er, for this afternoon at least.
With Mr Corbyn failing to mention the Priti Patel affair, she was fortunate. He chose instead to have a go at crime figures, which are a specialist subject for former Home Secretary Mrs May.
The Labour leader has sounded more confident in recent weeks but yesterday he was off his nosebag. At one point he made a minor error when he managed to refer to the Conservatives as ‘the Opposition’ and then clarified it, saying they were the opposition to Labour.
Such a tiny stumble should mean nothing. But in the molten hooley of PMQs, in a tightly contested Parliament, it creates a second’s weakness. Mrs May pounced on it and reminded Labour that, yes, they were the Opposition. Vintage repartee it was not but it was enough to earn her another roar from her backbenchers.
The session’s first question fell to Tom Tugendhat (Con, Tonbridge & Malling), one of the socalled pro-Brussels mutineers. Would he embarrass his party leader by asking her a stinger about Brexit? No. Mr Tugendhat instead settled for a moist economic point, requesting more Government spending, particularly on housing. Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was sitting beside Mrs May. His left index finger tapped up and down like an amorous cricket.
Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe), another of the ‘mutineers’, was eager to demonstrate loyalty to Mrs May and kept heckling Labour MPs. She has a remarkable strong voice, does ‘Soubs’. Should this politics game ever go wrong for her, she could find a second career as a cattle auctioneer. Or maybe as one of those Temperance League street evangelicals who preach the dangers of the Devil’s buttermilk.
Mr Corbyn tried to make trouble for Boris Johnson by noting he had deplored the closure of a police station in his constituency. ‘ Yes,’ shouted Boris, ‘ by the LABOUR mayor!’ Mrs May happily repeated this counter-argument, adding that maybe London mayor Sadiq Khan was ‘ not Labour enough’ for Mr Corbyn.
Mr Corbyn moved on to a complaint he had received about universal credit from a benighted citizen. Mrs May said she would happily have someone look at the case but, last time she asked Mr Corbyn to hand over details of a complaint, he had not bothered to do so. ‘I think it was Georgina,’ added Mrs May (Mr Corbyn likes to mention the Christian names of his correspondents). ‘Hand over the letter,’ cried Miss Soubry.
Alec Shelbrooke (Con, Elmet & Rothwell), a big lad, was by now bouncing in his seat so hard with excitement that his neighbour, Bim Afolami (Hitchin & Harpenden), must have felt airsick.
The session went 20 dull minutes over time. Ten minutes was caused by MPs’ long-windedness. Ten minutes of it was down to what we can now call ‘Speaker Time’, when John Bercow appears to give favoured Members a turn. The House thinned long before the end.