Labour’s flying circus puts Raab’s woes in the shade

Secretary of State for Brexit. It’s a job you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The rows. The stress. The pressure. Look what it’s done to poor Dominic Raab – and he’s only been in the job a few weeks. Before he took over from David Davis in July, he was a swaggering, surefooted backbencher.

Now he looks a nervous wreck. Take that speech he gave two weeks ago about the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The sweat was cascading off him. He couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable crossing the Sahara in a snowsuit. Desperately he tried to soak up the sweat with a tissue – but still it kept pouring down him.

Yesterday, as the Commons returned from its summer recess, Mr Raab made a statement to MPS about the latest Brexit developments. He at least managed to sound a bit less nervous this time: his voice didn’t tremble, his forehead didn’t glisten, and at no point was he forced to remove his shirt and wring it out like a dishcloth.

On the other hand, you couldn’t exactly call his performance confident.

Gamely he attempted to persuade MPS that, although a no-deal Brexit was likely to cause severe disruption, it would at any rate offer “countervailing opportunities”: the ability to lower trade tariffs, for example, and a “swifter” end to Britain’s EU payments.

His opponents didn’t sound convinced. Mr Raab didn’t sound all that convinced himself. It was as if he’d said: “Sure, the instant extinguishing of life on Earth by an asteroid would in many ways be a disappointment. But on the plus side, you’d never have to do the weeding again, or spend another Christmas with your in-laws. So, you know. Swings and roundabouts.”

Tory Brexiteers were gentle with him, although Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) complained that, at a select committee hearing earlier in the day, Mr Raab’s permanent secretary “didn’t answer any of our questions whatsoever”.

“Sounds like he’s doing a good job,” murmured Mr Raab.

Still, tough as life is for the Brexit Secretary, it could be worse. He could be in the Labour Party. Yesterday Labour’s NEC met in London to debate the party’s approach to anti-semitism. Outside in the street, pro-corbyn and anti-corbyn factions gathered to call each other racist.

One Corbyn supporter, though, pursued a gentler form of protest. He had brought an enormous glockenspiel, and was using it to regale everyone with the theme tune to the Seventies children’s TV show Mr Benn. I asked him whether he meant it as a tribute to the Corbynites’ second greatest hero, Tony Benn. “No,” he said, with a puzzled frown. “I just like the tune.”

He then launched into the theme tune of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Somehow, it felt very apt.