No jokes. No cheap shots. But real anger
ALMOST 28 years ago, younger and more idealistic, I sat in the Commons press gallery and watched Sir Geoffrey Howe impale Margaret Thatcher with a sour, mocking resignation. Just before 3pm yesterday, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rose to make his own personal statement. He was perched on almost the very same green leather from which Howe had launched his attack.
Was Boris about to skewer Theresa May? No. That was not the intention. This speech was less destructive and therefore more admirable. It lacked the theatre of Howe’s ambush, for the House was not as full as it was that autumnal afternoon in 1990, but Boris’s performance projected a sense of ‘cando’ and it was joke-free. He spoke with a piercing seriousness.
Blond barnet for once combed, he entered with the truncheon of his rolled script in one palm. He was accompanied by Bournemouth West’s Conor Burns, his former aide, who stepped in Boris’s wake with a petite and worshipful gait – a frigate accompanying the naval flagship.
Beyond the gangway, where more sceptical Tory MPs tend to sit, at least 60 Members demonstrated a solid core of interest. Behind and around Boris: tieless Ben Bradley (Mansfield), who quit a Tory party vice-chairmanship in protest at Chequers; ex Cabinet ministers David Davis, Michael Fallon, David Jones, Iain Duncan Smith; younger MPs such as Cheltenham’s civilised Alex Chalk (no hardline Brexiteer he), David Cameron’s Witney successor Robert Courts and Middlesbrough South’s cerebral Simon Clarke.
At the bar of the House stood Europhile Philip Lee (Bracknell), hand in tropical-suit pocket as if to indicate disdain. On the Government bench was Chief Whip Julian Smith but no other Cabinet minister.
Boris put aside any Prince Hal boisterousness. He came not to bury Theresa. He forsook cheap shots and played things responsibly, though there were flashes of anger. Why not? It has been enraging the way No 10’s pro-Brussels mandarins have blown Mrs May off course. If there was grit in Boris’s speech it was no more than that shared by millions of voters.
After opening thanks to Foreign Office staff, he spoke of Mrs May’s ‘courage and resilience’. Early praise can presage a ‘ but’? This came only after he said her initial position on Brexit in the Lancaster House speech had been spot on. Mrs May herself still invokes that speech. Boris was being perfectly proper. Now the ‘but’. It was the closest he came to insulting her. ‘A fog of self-doubt had descended’ since Lancaster House. Yet he did not specify that she was the foggy one. He later said ‘we have changed tack once and we can change again’.
Did he mean ‘we have changed leader once and can change leader again’? Some may choose to hear that but it is not what he said. He was, again, being punctiliously, perfectly proper.
His brother Jo, a Transport minister, listened from the front bench, staring at the ceiling. Next to him was Culture minister Margot James, who recently Tweeted insults about Boris. Silly of her. The Europhiles, time and again, have been the ones breaking the conventions. Conservative activists put store by manners.
FOR the speech’s big line, Boris slowed his delivery. ‘Mr Speaker, it is not. Too. Late. To save Brexit.’ His baritone was level, intent, unhysterical but making plain that Brexiteers will be behind Mrs May, propelling her towards a proper exit rather than ‘the miserable permanent limbo of Chequers, the democratic disaster of ‘ongoing harmonisation’ with no way out and no say for the UK’.
Finally, a small tease. ‘ We need to take one decision now,’ he said. Pause. Some of us braced him for an announcement that Mrs May should be dumped. Instead he said our decision must be ‘to believe in this country’. And he finished upbeat, speaking of unity.
Some 28 years after Geoffrey Howe, this was much more uplifting. It was almost enough to rekindle the idealism in a jaded sketchwriter. Boris showed yesterday that he may for the moment be out but he is not down.