A fresh benchmark for empty seats at PMQS
PMQS used to be the biggest draw in Parliament. Not any more. Attendance dwindles by the week – and yesterday it was the thinnest I’ve ever seen. By the final question, there were just five Tories sitting on the rearmost bench, and nine on the bench in front.
If it goes on like this, the Prime Minister will soon have to take questions from the clerks, or tourists who have wandered in by mistake.
(“Mr Speaker, I thank the lady in the green rucksack for her question. On behalf of the Government, I’m happy to confirm that the lavatories can be found on the left at the far end of the corridor.”)
Yesterday Theresa May herself was absent, as was Jeremy Corbyn, although at least they had good reason: both were in Northern Ireland for the funeral of the journalist Lyra Mckee.
Standing in for Mrs May was David Lidington, and for Mr Corbyn, Emily Thornberry. Exchanges were civil – until a peculiar insult from Mr Lidington. He accused Ms Thornberry of harbouring secret “leadership ambitions”.
Ms Thornberry guffawed. As well she might have. Because Mr Lidington, after all, is a Tory MP. And there’s scarcely a Tory MP left who has not, in the past month, been trumpeted in the press as a leadership hopeful. Even Mr Lidington himself has been mentioned.
When the Tories finally do get
round to holding a leadership contest, it’ll be chaos.
None of the candidates will be able to secure a colleague’s endorsement. Because every single colleague will be standing too.
“I say, old chap, could I possibly count on your vote?”
“Sorry, old bean – I was rather hoping I could count on yours.”
Since all the candidates will be tied on one vote each – his or her own – the party will have to send its members a ballot paper listing 311 different names. (There are 313 Tory MPS, but two will be omitted: Mrs May, plus Chris Grayling, who will accidentally have thrown his nomination paper in the recycling and posted the party chairman a flier for Domino’s pizza.)
Unfortunately, it will then become clear that, because of mass defections to the Brexit Party, the Tories now have more leadership candidates than members.
And then it will emerge that the leadership candidates themselves aren’t members, each having cancelled his or her direct debit in a haze of inebriated disgust some months earlier and then forgotten about it.
Indeed, it will even turn out that Mrs May is no longer a member, although, instead of quitting in protest at the leader, she’d quit in protest at everyone else.
After an internal inquiry, it will be discovered that the sole remaining member of the Conservative Party is Ken Clarke.
He duly votes for himself to become prime minister, graciously accepts, cancels Brexit, immediately resigns, and retires to the Caribbean to see out his days sipping rum punch in front of the cricket.