Is it so difficult for these eejits to honour the vote?
YET more Baldrickian cunning plans on Brexit: just what our political class needs to connect with the electorate! Can the Government find a procedural jink here, a shimmy-clause there, finally to deliver the will of the majority in the biggest vote held in Britain?
Or can MPs, some of whom seem to think the voters are grubby oiks, devise debating ploys and legislative double backward flick-flacks to stop Britain leaving the EU?
That was the broad thrust of what happened yesterday when Brexit Secretary David Davis made a Statement on his latest negotiations in Brussels. Mr Davis slipped some unexpected stuff into his remarks when he announced another Bill to bolster our EU departure procedure.
The new Bill is the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill but should perhaps more accurately be termed the Make Sure The Lawyers Don’t Try Any Funny Tricks (After We’re Out) Bill.
You needed to be a lawyer to grasp every detail. Little fingers were held at choice angles. Eyebrows quivered like humming birds. MPs drew in their mouths to little bows of connoisseurship, hoping to making themselves look intelligent. All the country will think is: how CAN it be so difficult for these eejits to honour the democratic result?
Shortly before he began his remarks, Mr Davis wandered over to the Labour side of the Chamber to have a quiet word with Hilary Benn, Labour MP and chairman of the Commons select committee on Brexit. Mr Benn (Leeds C) is, more than his party’s frontbencher Sir Keir Starmer, the suave spokesman for Blairites and Tory Europhiles. He is a stronger parliamentary performer than Sir Keir, a wonkish lawyer who sounds increasingly like the late Peter Cook doing one of his comic nerds.
Mr Benn expressed welcome for the new Bill. But did everyone fully understand what was going on? Few of us parliamentary scribes did! Ben Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter), who is ardent – hot hot hot as a Caribbean cabin boy – for Brussels and would probably love to overturn Brexit, kept turning round to ask Mr Benn questions. Christopher Leslie (Lab, Nottingham E) was sure the Bill was ‘a sham offer’. A woman from Hull, sitting behind Sir Keir, looked panic-stricken. Yikes. Should she nod or look sad?
Yvette Cooper (Lab, Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford) stared hard at a copy of Mr Davis’s speech, her jaw muscles working overtime.
DOMINIC Grieve (Con, Beaconsfield), the self-appointed supremo of Tory Remainers – gosh, he oozes it - stroked his long chin and relished the intellectual shenanigans of it all. You need a degree in jurisprudence to understand a word Mr Grieve says. Lords knows how he ever manages to communicate his desires to counter staff at a chip shop.
The Government’s new Bill in some ways gave Mr Grieve what he had been seeking. But now that they had granted that, he wanted something different. You whip up a delicious saveloy for a fussy customer and then he says he wanted curry chips all along. AntiBrexit Bob Neill (Con, Bromley & Chislehurst) fidgeted, perhaps unsure what to attack. Should he savage the apparent concession from Mr Davis or should he lick DD’s face? Ruff ruff. Runs round in circles chasing his tail. Muttley Bob may need to be told what to think.
Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe), another Remainer, started shouting ‘Shame!’ when her former fellow-Cameroon Sir Oliver Letwin (Con, W Dorset) said the Government should lay out a paper proclaiming the advantages of a no-deal result to the negotiations.
Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough) erupted theatrically about the EU’s attempts to separate Northern Ireland politically from Britain. ‘No surrender, no appeasement!’ bellowed Sir Edward. And Brexiteer Suella Fernandes (Con, Fareham) said the Bill should not be seen by Remainers as ‘an attempt to go behind the voters’.
Mr Davis affirmed to Owen Paterson (Con, N Shropshire) that if the House voted down the new Bill, we should still leave the EU. He later added that stopping Brexit was ‘not available to us’.