Leaders clashed like tortoises chewing over a leaf of lettuce
PRIME Minister’s Question Time was dire. Neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn pulsates at the despatch box. Neither crackles with danger. Neither produces novel phrases or surprising rhythms of speech.
They set about each other like tortoises chewing an old lettuce leaf.
Spoken cliché was accompanied by formulaic pose and gesture, all to the backnoise of predictable rhubarb from partisan MPs. Backbenchers, or at least those selected to speak yesterday, demonstrated little verve in subject matter or tone.
There was no suggestion that they had a hinterland in culture or philosophy or much of an opinion on how our body politic operates at an institutional level.
Wit was absent, unless you count the moment when Mrs May was asked by Mr Corbyn ‘what planet are you living on?’ – and Mrs May, some ten minutes later, came up with a reply of sorts when she accused Mr Corbyn himself of living on ‘Planet Venezuela’ (footnote: because Venezuela is socialist-run and bankrupt). Jimmy Tarbuck, she is not.
Speaker Bercow added to the dreariness by once again making the session last too long. Bercow, himself a fountain of recycled repartee, allows MPs and Mrs May to waffle. Everyone knows he will keep the session going until he reaches the end of the Order Paper’s list. Thus have we lost the urgency and rarity value PMQs had under decent Speakers.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if PMQs has become dull. You could argue that our departure from the EU is enough excitement to be going on with.
I disagree. Yes, Brexit is incredibly interesting but you would not know that from many of our politicians. They seem keen only to say that it is going to be ‘complex’ (translation: leave it to us, little ones, because we understand these things better than you).
Yesterday’s parliamentary proceedings opened with the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, appearing before the new Treasury select committee.
His evidence was being broadcast on TV monitors around the Palace of Westminster and much of the parliamentary estate was soon stunned into open-mouthed petrifaction, like ancient Greeks exposed to the head of Medusa.
Mr Hammond sat at the witness table with such morbidity that any nearby undertaker would have whipped out a tape measure to take his dimensions. Things were no livelier when he spoke about Treasury preparations for a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
Tory MP Kit Malthouse clutched his head with two palms, touching his temples to ease the neuralgia.
Words die the moment they are past Hammond’s two faintly rabbity front teeth, perishing from lack of projection. Gloom so exaggerated belongs to a Moliere play. Inside Mr Hammond there may smoulder the egotism of a John Major – he is as pettily sensitive as Major was – yet he lacks any force of character.
Has this man ever slapped his thighs in excitement, ever yabba-dabba-doed a lover’s name to a balcony? Even Shylock bleeds; but the Hammond political persona is as arid as over-cooked pork. That smothers political optimism. Electorally, it is not desirable.
Such was the mood of the House when it gathered for PMQs.
IT barely improved. Mrs May did at one point throw her papers on to the despatch box, after a rant from Labour’s Heidi Alexander, but that was more by accident than design. Mrs May said ‘oops’ immediately afterwards.
The Prime Minister energised her troops a little when she listed alleged achievements by the Government (in answer to a list of alleged failures cited by Mr Corbyn). It had all been tried before, on both sides.
She is proving resilient. With the exception of Mr Hammond, who was again causing trouble yesterday in the anti-Brexit Times newspaper, the Cabinet has calmed. But it is hardly the time of freshness and excitement it could be were Britain’s looming independence seized with zeal.
Boris should put whoopie cushions under their seats. Anything, please, to lift this ennui.