May’s plans croak with a whisper and not a bang

LAST time Theresa May lost her voice this badly was as she gave a speech to a Tory party conference.

Then, her backdrop fell apart. Yesterday, her backstop was far too sturdy.

The PM’s most loyal supporter, husband Philip, watched every croaking, gasping minute of her speech trying to defend the meagre concessions she dragged home from Strasbourg.

Sitting in the public gallery, Mr May winced with every cracked word and grinned when she managed enough breath to heave an attack at an opposition MP.

Earlier Tory MP Charlie Elphicke called her new deal less of a “rabbit out of the hat” more like a hamster.

GANDALF

As she rasped at the despatch box, it sounded as if she had swallowed the hamster which was trying to claw its way out. Brexiteer “Quiet Man” Iain Duncan Smith tried to rescue the Prime Minister’s vocal cords by giving her a throat sweet.

By then it didn’t much matter. A far louder man had already sealed her fate.

Geoffrey Cox, the Government’s booming lawyer, did his usual Gandalf impression as he outlined his legal opinion of the new concessions. He couldn’t bring himself to say the risk of the Northern Ireland backstop becoming permanent had gone – only that it had been “reduced”.

Nothing had changed. And one by one, MPs told Tory Gandalf: “This shall not pass!”

One Number 10 aide was overheard complaining the PM had been “Cox-blocked”.

And as she drove in the pouring rain back to Downing Street, she couldn’t escape the sense that her Brexit plan had ended not with a bang, but with a whisper.