Whack, whack, whack! Medical orderlies for Mr Juncker please!
HOUSTON, we have a handbag. Theresa May, just back from seeing the Queen, gave those slippery Eurocrats a terrific clobbering. She knew precisely what they were up to and they should keep their continental noses out of our general election.
‘Threats against Britain have been issued,’ she said coldly. The tone was almost declaration-of-war 1939.
The May handbag, already loaded, swivelled, calibrated, whirred. Whack. ‘Britain means no harm to our friends and allies on the continent. We want the EU to succeed.’
Whack. ‘But there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed. Who do not want Britain to prosper.’ Whack, whack, whack. Medical orderlies for Monsieur Juncker, please.
Baby, she was bitchin’. I thought trouble might be imminent when I saw her approaching the Downing Street lectern. She had just been to visit HM at Buck House for an official audience – telling the Monarch that Parliament had been dissolved and that there was going to be an election.
No doubt the Queen, with her faultless manners, expressed polite surprise, even if she had heard the possibility of an election being mentioned on the Classic FM news bulletins.
A trip to the Palace, even for a Prime Minister, is a treat – the sort of engagement to put you in a sunny mood. But as Mrs May alighted from her grey Jaguar on arriving back in Downing Street, her gait was burdened by dark intent. Her face was smouldering.
It is a look that – believe me – we former naughty schoolboys long ago learned to recognise on the face of a stern schoolmistress who has been pushed beyond her patience. Ooo-er, heads down, Jean-Claude.
Miss was irked. Miss had heard quite enough impertinence. In her controlled and daunting way, she was going to erupt and she was going to stop this nonsense. Who can blame her? Those rude European Commission people had been to dinner on Wednesday, doing all their continental kissy-kissy stuff and socking back the best part of a half-case of good claret. Then, within minutes of leaving, even before the smell of snuffed candles had cleared from the No10 diningroom, Juncker and Co got straight on the blower to Mauler Merkel to slag off Britain and say Mrs May was ‘in another galaxy’, she was so deluded on Brexit. Rotten manners. Rotten politics.
YESTERDAy afternoon a chilly breeze whistled through Downing Street, in more than one sense. It caught the prime minister’s hair as she was speaking, a strand on the top of her head standing to attention. Just like the rest of us. Mrs May’s voice was emphatic and deep almost ginny, though she is not much of a Juncker (sorry, drinker). She delivered the speech briskly and magisterially, without melodrama. It did not need any.
‘Britain’s position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press. The European Commission’s negotiating stance has hardened. Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials. All these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on June 8.’
This was scintillating stuff, a smacking rebuke to the tittletattlers of the Berlaymont. Unlike them, Theresa was not whispering down a telephone line to the ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on a unattributable basis.
She was making plain her fury in fresh air, in front of the black door to No10 that is a symbol of British government. you could hardly stage-manage more clearly the difference between the European Commission’s sneaky secrecy and Britain’s open, sovereign democracy (and how the Eurocrats hate and fear that!).
Will they have been watching this live in Belgium? I bet they’ve caught up with it by now. Here was a new Thatcher with every good reason to be livid. She was living up to Ken Clarke’s description of her as ‘a bloody difficult woman’ and she was using it, ruthlessly. Mrs T used to revel in her ‘Iron Lady’ nickname because she knew it made her sound tough. you could almost say it made her sound ‘strong and stable’.
Mrs May joined up the dots of the political argument and said ‘the choice this country faces now is very simple’: Jeremy Corbyn or her. Who would be better at doing battle for us in the Brexit talks?
Her speech was not all about the EU. The second half mentioned living standards, the NHS, education. But repeatedly she came back to the contrast between her and the Corbyn-led ‘coalition of chaos’ alternative. She herself was ‘ambitious for Britain’ and intended to tour the country to ‘earn’ our votes. After a passage when she said ‘I believe’ seven times, she did a Kipling-esque riff about British values.
Job done, handbag having thinned the Napoleonic ranks, she turned sharply on her heels and headed inside. A few minutes later the rain felt it was safe to come out and play.
What Dummkopfs M Juncker and his bitchy sidekicks must feel. I daresay there is quite a lot of blinking and even some reaching for the schnapps bottle. ‘Mein Gott, Jean-Claude, ve haf created ein Monster.’
yes, and she’s our monster. And we’re proud of her.