On she clambers, a tortoise, alone, impermeable, but somehow intact

AFTER five hours with her Cabinet, Mrs May walked out of the Downing Street door quite alone, the image of loneliness. Boos sounded beyond the security gates. Mrs May faced a bank of TV arc lamps in the autumn night. ‘This is a decisive step,’ she said. ‘I firmly believe with my head and my heart this is in the best interests of the entire kingdom.’ Lonely, yes, but intent, and still Prime Minister. In her restrained, short statement last night there burned a bloody-mindedness, a sense that she had again seen off the odds and her many critics.

She stressed that it had been ‘the collective decision of Cabinet’ to support the deal. Collective may not be the same as unanimous but it was more than many people had started to speculate she might secure as the afternoon’s meeting had gone long over time. ‘These decisions were not taken lightly,’ she said. ‘I know that there will be difficult days ahead.’ Nice understatement.

Her delivery was level, her air dignified but salted by a subtle satisfaction that another difficult hurdle had been surmounted. It has to be said, mind you, that she was markedly less chipper than the European Commission’s Michel Barnier, who gave a press conference in Brussels a few minutes later. He was wreathed in triumphant-looking smiles. Mrs May’s mood was one of a survivor. M Barnier’s was that of a slightly surprised victor.

It had been a day of smouldering silences, despair and political vacuum – much like the May premiership from day one, really. Broadcasters’ helicopters hovered over Parliament, as happens when drama is afoot. Rumours swelled and fell. As the hours passed, anger only increased.

The important stuff was going on behind the jampot-sealed door of 10 Downing Street’s Cabinet room. For those of us outside it was like waiting for word of from a vet’s operating theatre where the family spaniel was undergoing urgent surgery. Is the dog dead yet, doc? Mrs May’s brief statement in Downing Street at 7.20pm showed that the patient had survived this emergency, at least.

Dawn had brought gloating in Brussels, where European official Sabine Weyand crowed that ‘the EU will retain all the controls’. No, not wildly helpful, Prime Minister, we can imagine No 10’s breakfast orderly murmuring to his mistress. By mid-morning, Scottish Secretary David Mundell, mildest of men, was on manoeuvres. Twitchy about Mrs May’s intentions on the fishing industry, he was asking Scots Tory MPs to sign a protest letter.

The Cabinet was to meet at 2pm to consider the Olly Robbins Brexit plan. Before that Mrs May had to attend Prime Minister’s Questions. She entered the Chamber at 11.56am, helmet-coiffed, her lipstick a gash of scarlet. She was greeted by a few desultory cheers from Tory Remainers. From the far end, where the Leavers sat: deafening nothingness.

Her formulaic opening – ‘This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues’ – drew laughter from Labour MPs. Was ‘meetings’ a euphemism for ‘screaming rows’?

JEREMY Corbyn tilted at her Brexit plan, talking about the destruction of her ‘red lines’. Mrs May repeatedly said her plan would ‘take back control of our borders, our laws and our money’. By now most MPs had seen the cover of George Osborne’s London Evening Standard which showed Mrs May ensnared by EU stars and the headline ‘EU takes back control’. Ouch. The fury of a vengeful man.

Eurosceptic Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) had a question high on the Commons list. Mr Bone is often a jocular figure but not yesterday. There was a tremor of anger in his voice. He told Mrs May ‘if media reports about the EU arrangement are in any way accurate, you are not delivering the Brexit people voted for and today you will lose the support of many Conservative MPs and millions of voters’. Apart from a sole heckle of ‘cobblers!’, the House sucked in oxygen. Mrs May looked a bit popeyed and after a second’s pause there was a ballyhoo in the House. The force of the moment was wrecked by an intervention from Speaker Bercow. Mrs May recovered her poise to insist that she was indeed delivering the referendum’s result. Mr Bone rotated his thumbs and clenched his jaw.

All this time, at the back of the Chamber, stood Boris Johnson, leaner and tidier these days, a crowd of colleagues around him. From time to time he shook his head or wrinkled his face in apparent disbelief at her claims. I was put in mind of Michael Heseltine in the House one other November day, 28 years ago at Mrs Thatcher’s last PMQs.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox looked in briefly, standing behind the Speaker’s Chair, his ears pinned back. He soon left, Brexiteer Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt in his wake. The only person to be pro-Mrs May at PMQs was Europhile Ken Clarke (Con, Rushcliffe).

FOR much of the time Mrs May was in the Chamber, she was calm, even flinty. yet there came a moment when she was having a private talk to Speaker Bercow, right in the eyeline of my sniper’s position in the gallery, and I caught a look of bleak exhaustion on her face. And that was before her five-hour steeplechase with the Cabinet.

In the wild, wicked world beyond, Tony Blair was tarting himself round TV rolling-news, complaining that her Brexit would keep us tied too closely to the EU – something snake Blair has schemed for all along!

A Tory MP chum said the mood in the Commons tea rooms by 5pm was volcanic. Tories were fed up with Mrs May. Labour moderates were appalled by the thought of a general election which could let Momentum de-select them. In Downing Street a solitary microphone stood for Mrs May. A Tyburn rope awaiting its customer?

But she survived the day. On she clambers, a tortoise, impassive, impermeable, alone but somehow intact.