PM is coasting when it comes to Tory criticism and football results
This is where we are now. This is how bad it’s got. A Conservative MP can stand up in the Commons, tell her own Prime Minister to resign – and the House hardly bats an eyelid. It simply isn’t an event any more.
Yesterday, during PMQS, Andrea Jenkyns (Con, Morley & Outwood) demanded that Theresa May step aside. The Prime Minister, she said, “has failed to deliver on her promises, we have lost 1,300 hard-working councillors, and sadly the public no longer trust her to run the Brexit negotiations”.
Once upon a time, an outburst like that would have drawn gasps. Jaws would have plummeted. Eyeballs would have popped from their sockets. Reporters would have sprinted gibbering to their desks.
But not any more. Ms Jenkyns’ denunciation caused barely a ripple. The Labour benches did not roar with astonished glee. The Tory benches did not bellow in outraged defence of their leader, or in delighted support of her adversary. Reporters did not begin rattling off 1,000 words of breathless colour for the next day’s front page. (Tory Calls on May to Go. In other
news: Rain Wet.) As for Mrs May herself, she didn’t look remotely fazed. Instead, she pointed out that if certain MPS had supported her deal, Britain would have left the EU weeks ago.
And that was that. For all the impact Ms Jenkyns had made, she might as well have asked about the consistency of rice pudding in the Commons canteen.
Or perhaps – like no fewer than three MPS yesterday – she could have asked about football. It happens a lot at this time of year, as the season reaches its climax: MPS seizing the chance to trumpet a local triumph.
Mark Menzies (Con, Fylde), for example, asked the Prime Minister to congratulate non-league AFC Fylde on reaching the finals of both the FA Trophy and the National League play-off. Paul Blomfield (Lab, Sheffield Central), meanwhile, asked her to congratulate Sheffield United on their promotion to the Premier League. It may be a total waste of parliamentary time, but I enjoy it, if only for the touching awkwardness of Mrs May’s replies. She herself hasn’t the faintest interest in football, but she always obliges, and chips in whatever nugget of relevant information an aide has scribbled in her notes.
“Can I say to my honourable friend,” she murmured valiantly, “that he is absolutely right to congratulate AFC Fylde, who I believe are known as ‘the Coasters’, for their recent success …”
We’ll know her time is finally up when an aide goes rogue, and slips fake football facts into her PMQS folder. “And finally, Mr Speaker, may I take this opportunity to congratulate Dynamo Biggleswade, commonly known by their nickname ‘The Screaming Antichrists’, on their defeat of Neptune in the Interplanetary Cup on Sunday …”