Forget the will of the people; it’s now all about the will of the manifestos

Originally it told MPS to respect “the will of the people”. Fearing that this has fallen on deaf ears, however, the Government is now trying a new tack. It’s telling MPS to respect “the will of the manifestos”.

A peculiar line, but that’s what the Government is going with. Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, coined the phrase yesterday, during a statement from the despatch box.

The only acceptable form of Brexit, she warned MPS, would be one that was “in line with the will of the manifestos that we all stood on” at the 2017 general election. In other words: if a particular type of Brexit (say, “Common Market 2.0”) didn’t feature in his or her party’s manifesto, an MP shouldn’t vote for it.

Her argument makes sense. At least, until you start to think about it.

Take the Conservative Party manifesto. Mrs Leadsom seems to think that all Tory MPS are bound by it. Well, perhaps not quite all. One Tory MP, apparently, is exempt from this rule. Theresa May.

She, after all, ditched the manifesto’s most attention-grabbing new policy (the so-called “dementia tax”) just four days after it was published. Then, immediately after the election, she ditched many of its other pledges – for example, giving MPS a free vote on fox hunting; ending free school lunches for children aged five to seven; dropping the triple lock on pensions; and ending the ban on new grammar schools.

Mrs May wouldn’t have had to shred her supposedly sacrosanct manifesto, of course, if the public had supported it.

But evidently it didn’t – as can be deduced from the fact that the Tories went into the election with a majority, and came out of it without one.

And yet now, two years later, both Mrs Leadsom and Mrs May are insisting that MPS must stay true to a manifesto the public rejected and which the Government itself has otherwise abandoned.

Yesterday, Graham Jones (Lab, Hyndburn) tried to put this point to Mrs Leadsom. “The Conservative manifesto at the last general election was defeated,” said Mr Jones. “Isn’t that true?”

“No,” retorted Mrs Leadsom briskly, and sat straight back down again, without elaboration.

Well, if she believes that, she must have found the past two years of politics deeply puzzling. Who are these cross-looking men from Northern Ireland, she must wonder, and why does Mrs May keep having to throw so much money at them?

Today MPS will attempt to find a form of Brexit a majority of them can support. Not everyone’s hopes are high. “Parliament is about to take control of this process,” said the SNP’S Pete Wishart, “with all the enthusiasm of the first lieutenant of the Titanic taking over from the captain.”

Imagine if, after all that fuss about taking control from Mrs May, MPS find they have no idea what to do with it – and hand it forlornly back to her.