We’ll now see whose voice is loudest, but it won’t be sweet-sucking PM
In the past three years, we’ve learnt a lot about Theresa May. But there’s still one thing I’m dying to know. Exactly how many black cats did she run over in a previous life? The answer must, at the very least, be somewhere in the low five figures, because no matter how inept a Prime Minister she may be, it still doesn’t totally account for everything that’s befallen her.
Take yesterday. Mere hours after her ostensibly triumphant return from Strasbourg, the Attorney General had ruefully announced that the “legal risks” in her deal “remain unchanged”.
Rising to face the Commons at just gone two o’clock, Mrs May had one final, desperate chance to win MPS round. And what happened?
The moment she opened her mouth, she lost her voice. Yes, again. Just like she did during her calamitous speech to the Tory conference the year before last. But this time it was even worse. It physically hurt to listen to her. She sounded, variously, like a dying bluebottle, a cat sliding down a blackboard and a violin, played with a hacksaw. Whenever an MP broke in to pass comment, Mrs May could be seen sucking frantically on a cough sweet.
For all the good it did her throat, it might as well have been a cheese grater.
She battled on, of course, because that’s what she does. She’d have battled on if the lights had gone out, the dispatch box had burst into flames, and Beelzebub had appeared at the Bar of the House, idly stroking his goatee.
But God, it was grim to watch. For the most crucial, vulnerable moment of her premiership, half of her MPS hadn’t bothered turning up – and the half who had were slumped like split-open sandbags. Gloom hung over them like a Victorian fog.
“I really do want to know,” said Roberta Blackman-woods (Lab, City of Durham), “why the Prime Minister has persistently sought to get a deal that satisfies the hardliners on her side, rather than reaching across the chamber.” It was the way she said it. That was the killer. It wasn’t a rant. It was a sigh, the sigh of a weary teacher, once again explaining basic arithmetic to a child who refuses to learn.
The result of the vote came, with Mrs May last to take her seat in the chamber. Solemnly the tellers stepped forward. She’d lost, this time, by 149 votes. The Prime Minister stared into space. She was still sucking on a sweet.
She “profoundly regretted” her defeat, but accepted it. Now, it would be up to MPS to decide whether to pursue a no-deal Brexit. Her ministers would be free to vote as they liked (this being, clearly, the only way to prevent scores of them resigning in protest).
If MPS opposed a no-deal Brexit, they could vote to delay Brexit. And then, of course, they would have to decide what to do next. Agree a different deal? Revoke Article 50? Hold a second referendum?
“YES!” shouted Remainers. “NO!” bellowed Brexiteers. We’ll see, soon enough, whose voice proves the loudest. But it surely won’t be the Prime Minister’s.