Nicky, pink with rage next to an unthrilled Osborne
HARD-PRESSED orderlies in white coats spent the day rushing to and fro with iced flannels, to be placed on the fevered brows of pro-Brussels MPs. My dears, le tout snootocracy was in a state of the most tremendous agitation about Brexit. Cross fists were shaken, fingers pointed. Voices became husky – hollow! – with grieving disbelief. Britain was really going to leave the European federal project? You mean it wasn’t just some bad dream? Nooooo!
It is as if the great news of June 24, that dawn of our liberation from the bossy EU, has only just reached this metropolitan elite.
In recent days they have taken off into the ether like one of those Olympic pole vaulters who has just pronged his stick into terra firma. Twang! Up he rises, goggle-eyed with the sheer effort of it all. There will come the inevitable, flailing-limbed descent once these Bremoaners have reconnected with reality. But for the moment the likes of Ed Miliband (Lab, Doncaster N) and Nick Clegg (Lib Dem, Sheffield Hallam) are bawlingly bereft.
Labour had called an Opposition Day debate on our exit from the EU. I will not bore you for the entire column about it, for it was truly no more significant than the barking of mongrels at a passing Royal Mail van, but no doubt the BBC will be giving it bells and whistles, so a few observations may be in order.
Nicky Morgan (Con, Loughborough), flanked on one side by unthrilled former chancellor George Osborne, gave a speech of pinkening anger. Having said she would insist on scrutinising the Government every inch of its path to Brexit, she complained that some had dared to scrutinise her own (most peculiar) behaviour of late. I suppose one or two of us may have tweaked her hooter a bit, but why not?
‘I resent it!’ snapped Mistress Morgan, in earlier life a corporate solicitor in mergers and acquisitions (no wonder she likes the EU). She thundered that the more she was herself scrutinised, the more difficult she intended to become. Point of information: Her constituents voted to Leave by 54 per cent.
Mrs Morgan said that the negotiations with the EU would likely continue for ‘months, years and decades’. Is she right? Surely two years at most would suffice. WHEN we cancel a contract with a mobile telephone supplier we do not continue to negotiate with that company for ‘decades’. It may even be open to question whether or not the EU will still be around in even one decade’s time. But it may outlast Mrs Morgan’s political career.
Kwasi Kwarteng ( Con, Spel- thorne), a firm Brexiteer, boomed that the debate was more like ‘a group therapy session’. He could not understand all this pant-wetting (not quite his phrase, I admit) about us leaving the Single Market. ‘ Most countries have plentiful access to the Single Market but are not members,’ said Mr Kwarteng.
Nick Boles (Con, Grantham & Stamford) gave an interesting speech. Though a devoted Remainer at the referendum, he now saw that Europhiles needed to understand the vastness of what had just happened. They should change their views accordingly.
Earlier we had PMQs where Theresa May was unflappable, despite taking verbal gyp from Emily Thornberry (more properly called Lady Nugee), who has become the Labour front bench’s new Ed Balls.
Mrs May claimed that acid Emily was rabbiting on about a second vote on the EU. ‘I would have thought,’ said the PM, ‘that Labour MPs would have learned this lesson: You can ask the same question again, you still get the answer you don’t want.’
Labour MPs, reminded of their unsuccessful attempt to topple Jeremy Corbyn, fell glumly silent while the Tory benches roared.
In vain did one look for Stephen Phillips (Con, Sleaford & N Hykeham), who has gone off the deep end in attacking the May Government over Brexit. Where was this mega-rich defender of the Commons? Tarting himself around on Sky telly, naturally, and wearing more make-up than the late Dame Barbara Cartland.