Huffs were taken and miffery was widespread
THERESA May was not in the Chamber yesterday evening for the result of the latest vote on Brexit policy. She had been lurking behind the Speaker’s Chair a few minutes earlier but chose not to let Labour MPs jeer her in person when the 258 to 303 defeat was announced.
Jeremy Corbyn half-heartedly complained about her absence but few were particularly surprised. The debate had been a 2nd XI sort of game.
The vote was not legally binding but perhaps not entirely meaningless. It showed Mrs May and her dimwits that if they provoke the Tory and DUP Brexiteers, they will not win Commons divisions.
What of the five-hour debate itself? Well, Dominic Grieve came close to saying he will quit the Tory party, Sir Oliver Letwin warbled that he had been pushed over the edge and now wanted the Commons to replace the Cabinet, and Yvette Cooper, quite the little actress, worked herself close to tears as she contemplated a No Deal Brexit.
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, it was just another Brexit boreathon at the House of Horrors.
Huffs were taken. Backbenchers boiled at their party leaders. Miffery was widespread. And it is ALL YOUR FAULT for voting Leave in that referendum.
As your dutiful scribe I will relate certain high or (according to your leaning) low points but for sheer honesty and concision it was hard to beat a remark from Labour Remainer Alison McGovern. ‘Should we really,’ asked Wirral South’s McGovern, ‘keep going along with Brexit just because we said we would?’
There it is in one sentence: the attitude of today’s political class to their election manifestos. They undertook solemnly before the 2017 election to respect the result of the referendum. Now they breezily contemplate doing the opposite. Promises schomises.
The day could have been less antsy had Downing Street official Olly Robbins not dropped such a big ball-cock in a Brussels bar, boasting this week that No Deal was no longer a possibility. That unsettled Eurosceptic MPs and meant that Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, opening yesterday’s debate, had to reassure his fellow ’sceptics that No Deal was still the legal default position.
Mr Barclay, replying to David Davis (Con, Haltemprice & Howden) confirmed that March 29 is still departure day – ie, the Government does not, despite idiot Robbins’s claims, seek a delay to Brexit.
Mr Barclay said No Deal is, in law, the alternative to a deal. Star Trek’s Mr Spock would like that logic.
But, eek! By saying that, Mr Barclay only set off the Europhiles. Jeepers, it’s tricky, this business. Tilt a halfinch to the Right and you enrage the Left. And vice versa.
Mr Grieve, looking increasingly stringy and red-chinned, snapped that Brexit was a profanity. He added: ‘There is going to come a time when my ability to support the Government is going to run out completely if we continue behaving in this absolutely crazy fashion.’
Amazing that his Tory party locals in Beaconsfield put up with such strops. But I hear his association worthies are very much in Dominic fob-watch’s pocket.
As for Sir Olive-oil Letwin, he, in sentences as ornate as a Swiss wristwatch, wittered: ‘I have been driven finally to a conclusion: we will have to take on the government of this country!’ Oi, Queenie. Send for Letwin and beg him to be your PM, or you’ll have a revolution on your gloved hands.
I could go on. I could tell you about Hilary Benn’s encouragement of Yvette Cooper to oust Corbyn as Labour leader (sorry, I mean to say his encouragement of her plot to delay Brexit). Poor Chuka Umunna looks rather left out of things.
Tory Remainer Anna Soubry decided not to press, for the time being, an amendment to force the Cabinet to cough up sensitive documents. David Lidington went to sit next to her, like an Edwardian doctor hastening to a lady with the vapours. Mind you, hard to say which of those two is the odder.