Davis couldn’t have looked more pleased if he’d sparked a cigarillo in self congratulation
BORIS Johnson didn’t even bother turning to face his wannabe assassin. Because the moment Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle yelled ‘David Davis’ toward the end of PMQs it was obvious to everyone crammed into the Commons’ throbbing bear-pit what was coming next.
Keen observers of the Westminster mad house will know that whenever a Conservative leader is tottering, Mr Davis’s sniper’s bullet is rarely far behind.
Should breakfast TV bookers ever require a Tory to indulge in some early morning talk of mutiny, Basher’s yer man.
As the old rascal rose, he even tilted his gaze towards the press gallery as if to say, ‘Watch this, lads’.
Standing tall on his toes, Davis began.
‘i expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take,’ he announced. A chamber loaded, a hammer cocked.
‘i’ll remind him of a quotation which may be familiar to his ear: Leopold Amery to Neville Chamberlain. “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. in the name of God, go!”’
From Labour’s benches came theatrical gasps. Pur-lease! Episodes of Crossroads have had less predictable plotlines.
As Davis resumed his seat, he popped a peppermint between his tightly puckered lips. Swirling it around on his tongue, he leaned over and shot fellow rebel William Wragg (MP for Hazel Grove) a knowing wink. He could not have looked more pleased with himself if he’d kicked off his brogues and sparked up a selfcongratulatory cigarillo.
Shots had been fired but did they hit the target? As blueon-blue attacks go, it was hardly equal to Sir Geoffrey Howe’s skewering of Margaret Thatcher.
What made Sir Geoffrey’s ‘broken cricket bats’ speech so poisonous was that it was so out of character for him to rock the boat.
Davis, by contrast, is one of politics’ attention-seekers. one senses he’d crawl through an open sewer if it meant a plum slot on the Today programme.
Nor are his political antennae judged to be as well tuned as they once were.
it was he, lest we forget, who urged the PM to save owen Paterson’s bacon, when the former minister was found guilty of ‘egregious’ breaches of lobbying rules by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.
Davis’s melodramatic intervention failed because Mr Johnson, somehow, had just pulled a pugilistic performance out of the bag. What was being billed as his farewell innings turned out to be a surprisingly feisty knock.
Dunno what he’d scoffed down for breakfast. Double helpings of ready Brek on this showing.
For a man supposedly facing an appointment with the noose, he certainly seemed relaxed when he arrived.
Dawdling behind the Speaker’s chair, it was all jokey smiles and raised thumbs.
POLICING minister Kit Malthouse pumped and rubbed his shoulders like a wrestler’s masseur. Chancellor rishi Sunak stood close, tight as a pop star’s security detail, though rather less willing to take a bullet for his principal.
Not even Bury South MP Christian Wakeford’s choreographed defection to Labour prior to
kick-off delivered the coup de grace some expected.
If anything it seemed to galvanise those ‘pork pie’ putschers on the Conservative benches.
‘Shame on you,’ they screamed as a glum-looking Wakeford was led off to his new seat, like a disgraced felon being bundled into the back of a Black Maria.
Judging by the mood among Tories in central lobby afterward, few black armbands will be donned over his desertion.
If the welcome Wakeford received from his new colleagues was a tad tepid, the roars which greeted the PM’s arrival will have loosened the window putty.
Staring Labour’s new turncoat MP in the eye, he declared the Conservatives won Bury South at the last election ‘and we will win again’. More roars.
Gone was Boris’s ‘woe-is-me’ routine that had been trotted out to such disastrous effect the previous day on Sky News. The bloodhound chops had been wiped away. Finally, some zest. He pumped the economy. He hailed the vaccine roll-out.
The front bench lapped it all up. At one point, I feared Nadine Dorries might require oxygen.
Sir Keir Starmer, meanwhile, cut a different figure to the usual. All of a sudden he’s looking frightfully pleased with himself. A man already eyeing up the cushion weaves for the Downing Street flat, peut-etre.
He mocked the PM’s pitiful appearance on Sky but his questions lacked the venom of the previous week. Outrage over those Downing Street soirees has given way to sneery amusement.
A series of gags Starmer made about heckling Tories (‘I see the Whips have ordered them to bring their own boos!’) failed to land. They rarely do.
How juries must have winced whenever the great prosecutor turned jocular.
Ian Blackford was called. Pffft! You could feel any built-up tension evaporate immediately. Once it’s Blackford who’s called, the PM is usually home and hosed.
Naturally, the SNP leader demanded Boris resign. Of course he did. It wouldn’t be PMQs if he didn’t. It’d be like the Rolling Stones booking Madison Square Garden and not playing Satisfaction.
When the session ended, Davis shuffled past Alec Shelbrooke (Con, elmet) and Simon Hoare (North Dorset), no great cheerleaders for the PM, casting a line for compliments.
Instead both shot him a look of mild indifference. Much like being turncoat, being an assassin can be a lonely business.