I’d rather eat my own knees than hear the phrase ‘dynamic alignment’ again
Just when you think it can’t get any worse. Last night in the Commons, MPS rejected every single type of Brexit. But also, at the exact same time, rejected every single way to prevent Brexit. I don’t know what all 65 million of us did in a previous life to deserve this. But it must have been pretty serious.
Here’s how desperate Theresa May has grown.
At five o’clock yesterday evening, she promised Tory MPS that she would resign as Prime Minister – as soon as Parliament passed her deal.
At this rate, she’ll be the longestserving PM in history.
And to think: it was meant to be the day MPS “took control” of Brexit. If anything, their method of controlling Brexit was even more chaotic than the Government’s.
First, they spent two hours bickering over constitutional small print, before holding a vote on whether to hold the votes they’d already voted to hold. Result: they voted to hold them. Well, at least they managed to decide on that.
Finally they began the actual debate. But, no matter how fancily they dressed up their proposals (“Common Market 2.0”: basically the same as remaining, but with less influence), for the most part it was yet another dreary rerun of the same points we’ve heard over and over for the past two years.
I could have mouthed along to every word, like a 12-year-old at an Ed Sheeran concert.
The difference being that 12-yearolds enjoy themselves at Ed Sheeran concerts, whereas I would rather eat my own knees than hear the phrase “dynamic alignment” again.
The most memorable moment came when Jacob Rees-mogg mocked his fellow Tory Nick Boles for making “a characteristically Wykehamist point: highly intelligent, but fundamentally wrong”.
Mr Rees-mogg was educated at Eton; Mr Boles, at Winchester. Let the record show that, in 2019, at the height of Britain’s greatest political crisis since the war, a Tory MP taunted another Tory MP for having attended a marginally less illustrious public school.
Later on, incidentally, Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois gave a speech using notes, and Tory Remainer Ed Vaizey gasped: “You can read!”
Brexit really has brought the Tory party together, hasn’t it.
The real action seemed to be happening outside the chamber. News spread of Tory Brexiteers frantically abandoning their opposition to Mrs May’s deal, and pledging to vote for it.
Only one snag: they might not get the chance. John Bercow, the Speaker, darkly reminded MPS that he would only permit another vote on the deal if the Government had “changed” it. Which it hasn’t.
And then the DUP announced that they were still opposed anyway. Which surely means the deal’s dead.
Then again, every alternative also seems to be dead. Which possibly means the deal’s alive again.
Oh God. When will this unprecedented, unpredictable and yet at the same time unbelievably tedious nightmare end?
Maybe we should hold another referendum – so that the public can reject every possible outcome, too.