Grayling is as stolid as my wife’s apple cake
SOME undecided voters may look at Vote Leave and wonder if its key personnel are too jaunty. There is Boris Johnson with his hairdo, Nigel Farage with his Col Mustard corduroys, Michael Gove’s Ronnie Barker spectacles and Priti Patel, prone to dazzling jackets. Leave folk are individualists, are they not? They seem to enjoy life and use vivid adjectives.
Merriment: That is my impression so far of the Leave lot. Political campaigns often throb with neuralgic tension – a terror that calamity lurks behind every box hedge – but Vote Leave events are notable for their zest. Campaign volunteers are having a liberated time as they contemplate a future free of all that Brussels interference. Robin Hood and his men: Such is the spirit of Leave.
Yet even the friskiest ketch needs ballast. Even the most experimental jazz tune must be rooted by some sort of bass line. So it proves with the Leave Campaign, which in addition to all those jovial buccaneers has – cue the soggy trombones – Chris Grayling.
Mr Grayling is Leader of the Commons and Lord President of the Council (the latter post brings him regular meetings with HM the Queen, lucky lady). He was one of the first Cabinet ministers to say he would resist the Cameroons on Europe. Unlike certain careerists, Mr Grayling kept his word. As stolid as my wife’s apple cake: That’s Grayling.
Yesterday he gave a speech at Vote Leave’s London HQ. Was it scintillating? No. Did he say anything fantastically newsworthy? Not that I noticed. But his contribution was all the stronger for that.
Mr Grayling lacks the acidity of a George Osborne. Unlike Remain’s Eddie Izzard, he does not wear – nor, I imagine has ever worn – lipstick and high-heeled shoes. Some MPs have a taste for Cynthia Payne- style soirees but the most exciting event you can imagine Mr Grayling attending is a summer lecture of the Epsom Literary Society. This tall, slightly pot-bellied, bald chap is not haloed by continental pomade like some Mandelson or Roland Rudd (the City PR schmoozer pulling strings for Remain). He lacks the TV fame of that absurd squirt Sugar, who was yesterday urging us to vote for Brussels. Unlike Anna Soubry or David Cameron, he does not utter feisty denunciations of opponents. He just stands there, chewing his Ermintrude cud, putting his case in a prosaic manner. Yesterday he argued that the EU would move to ever-greater politi- cal union to solve its eurozone crisis. He quoted France’s President Hollande’s desire for ‘a eurozone Parliament, a common budget and a common cabinet’. He cited Angela Merkel saying ‘we need more Europe – not only a monetary union but also a so- called fiscal union and more joint budget policy’. They were already planning an EU national insurance number, he said.
BRUSSELS would ‘Europeanise’ health services, said Mr Grayling. He said this without histrionics. The words were uttered in a plain accent, unaffected, untwirly. ‘If we vote to Remain we will be part of it whether we like it or not.’
During questions, he said Mr Cameron should remain as PM after the referendum, even if we vote to Leave. He felt the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, should also stay in situ. ‘The last thing we will need is comprehensive team changes,’ said Mr Grayling. ‘There needs to be stability.’
Some hothead invited him to talk of the Remainers as treasonous. Mr Grayling gently declined to do so. Nor would he dish the inside track on what the Queen thinks of the EU.
It was ponderous, unexciting – and, in its own way, rather admirable. I mean that without sarcasm.
There is a genuine merit to dullness sometimes in politics, particularly at a time of such agitation. Mr Grayling provides the suet in the Christmas pud, the tatty to the neeps.
If a man of such caution has been driven to leave the EU, there must be a case for doing so. The maniacs are on the Remain side.