At least Mrs May wasn’t a hypocrite – unlike clapping Tory weasels who knifed him in the back
THOSE last slurps of a martini always taste the sweetest. Those final few bars of the national anthem are always sung with the utmost oomph. It was just so when Boris Johnson came to the Commons yesterday to deliver his farewell performance.
And my goodness did he play a blinder. No really, he was magnificent – punchy, wry, a tad rueful.
As for his audience, they lapped it up gleefully. There was laughter, cheers, even a few tears.
And for a man whose career has endured more twists and turns than the Isle of Man TT, wasn’t it always destined to end this way?
Now, I know he had heavily insinuated that last week’s PMQs was to be his final blast – but this time it really was the last hurrah.
And while Barbra Streisand’s return to the stage after having ‘completed’ her farewell tour was greeted with fans threatening to sue, the mood on the Conservative side of the chamber yesterday was quite the opposite.
Yet despite the loud cries for more, there would be no encore. Not for now, at any rate. Instead, as he bowed out, Boris left them with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous movie quote: ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’
He had entered the chamber a few seconds before midday. Arriving just as he did that first time he bounded in as the freshfaced new leader almost three years ago – to raucous applause and a strong sense among MPs of ‘what have we done?’
Back then, they worried what they’d let themselves in for.
Now many wondered why on earth they were letting him go.
Plonking himself down on the green leather, Boris looked liberated. And why wouldn’t he? for the past week, he’s been having a ball: barbecues at Chequers and loop-the-loops in fighter jets. Best of all, he finally got to give that pipsqueak know-it-all Tobias Ellwood the sack. I doubt he’s laughed so hard since David Cameron was forced to call the removal vans.
Beside him yesterday was
Home Secretary Priti Patel, pretty in pink and dripping with more bling than J-Lo. Two rows behind sat his predecessor, Theresa May, head cocked, back stooped and those piercing peepers still raging, raging, raging.
And Sir Keir Starmer? He was a bit more gracious than last week but wasted his questions trying to make hay out of the Tory leadership contest. He began with a lame joke in which he compared the warring candidates to an episode of EastEnders. Let the record show no one laughed.
The PM breezily announced he’d not been following the race particularly closely. Undoubtedly true. Boris isn’t good at being excluded. Leave him out of a game of Monopoly and chances are he’ll kick the board over.
Anyway, whoever wins will wipe the floor with Starmer like some ‘ household detergent’, he said. He described Sir Keir as a ‘pointless human bollard’ who was always blocking everything. The Conservative benches cheered. Bullseye.
The Human Bollard just stared ahead blankly. The insult didn’t appear to register. On the rules-obsessed, moral tyranny that is Planet Starmer, there is no such thing as a ‘pointless’ bollard.
AfTERthat, the session temporarily reverted to type. The SNP’s Ian Blackford tootled his bagpipes for Scottish independence. Lib Dem bore Sir Ed Davey baffled everyone by enacting scenes from Shakespeare. ‘What a Bottom!’ yelled Tim Loughton (Con, E Worthing). He was referring not to Sir Ed’s considerable rump but the Shakespearean character who turns into an ass.
Then came the explosion to Boris’s firework send- off. He advised his colleagues to ‘focus on the road ahead’ and not to always listen to the Treasury. (Translation: ‘Up yours, Rishi!’) ‘Mission largely accomplished – for now!’ he thundered.
The Conservative benches rose to applaud. Directly behind the PM, education minister Andrea Jenkyns’ lips wobbled like a dodgy trifle.
Mrs May eventually stood but resolutely refused to clap. She folded her arms impatiently as though seeing off a house guest gone stale.
Some will denounce her as bitter old sourpuss. Not totally fair. Clapping in the chamber is rightly forbidden.
And besides, at least she wasn’t being a hypocrite. Not like those clapping Boris who only a fortnight ago had happily knifed him the back.
What weasels. What utter bloody fools.