The PM got in crash position as Refusenik Esther rose
MINISTERS’ bottoms tightened like a tray of lemon-squirted oysters. It was 12.35pm and Speaker Bercow, scanning the benches at PMQs, had just called the name of the Rt Hon Member for Tatton. ‘Esther McVey,’ he sang.
Refusenik Esther! Last week she was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Now, after a blazing Cabinet row with the May brigade (including new Cabinet Secretary Sedwill, clotfooted fool), she was down on the Brexity backbenches. Down where they smoulder. Impis on the horizon, Captain. Thousands of ’em.
What was she going to ask? Esther is a plain-spoken Merseysider. Were we about to enter asterisk territory? Theresa May turned her head to the left and leaned forward, assuming that crash position recommended by airlines. Philip Hammond almost swallowed his beak. Karen Bradley, intellectual giant and Ulster Secretary, popped wide her eyelashes as though she had just spotted a spectre. Amber ‘Remainer’ Rudd, who has replaced Miss McVey in Cabinet, froze, her face suddenly waxen and wary.
Miss McVey’s name may have been greeted with ‘oohs’ and hear-hears – the corrida hoping that she might spear the Prime Minister – but in the event she played it civil. ‘Can the Prime Minister assure the House today that the UK will be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, come what may?’ On the Government bench the release of tension was palpable. Air leaving a dead sheep’s gut. Miss Rudd loosened. Miss Bradley returned to inner philosophical contemplation of the latest ‘Janet and John’ book she is trying to read.
Mrs May coughed up thanks to Miss McVey for her ministerial work and said: ‘I can give her the assurance that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on 29 March 2019.’
HOLD that assurance in your minds one moment, please. Copy it with your computer mice. Now let me briefly take you to something Mrs May had said a few minutes earlier, in response to Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader had noted that Miss Rudd, on the wireless at breakfast, had said there was no chance of us leaving the EU without a deal. Did Mrs May agree?
Mrs May, replying to Mr Corbyn, said that if MPs did not vote for her Withdrawal Agreement, ‘it will either be more uncertainty and more division or it could risk no Brexit at all’.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there we have it. Exhibit A: Mrs May tells Mr Corbyn there could be ‘no Brexit at all’. Exhibit B: Mrs May tells Esther McVey that we are definitely leaving the EU next March 29.
She says one thing. Says another. Expects us to believe both. While she herself probably believes neither. You can see how she has driven the whole country to the brink of alcoholism.
Other things to report from PMQs: Mr Corbyn, on entering the Chamber, loitered a few moments behind the Speaker’s Chair while two men fussed about dandruff and lint on his shoulders. One of them was Jim Fitzpatrick (Lab, Poplar & Canning Town). He even licked a finger and set to work, quite hard, scratching away at a mark on Mr Corbyn’s rear left shoulder. A bird dropping?
While Mr Corbyn was putting his questions to Mrs May, one of those nodding in agreement was Nigel Dodds of the DUP. Mr Dodds later made an intervention of his own and he was pretty sulphurous. On him rests the Government’s majority.
Meanwhile, there was dissent in the normally loyal burr of Neil Parish (Con, Tiverton & Honiton), who said ‘my farming instincts tell me we should not hand over £39billion before we get the deal’. Andrew Rosindell (Con, Romford) said his constituents were ‘deeply unhappy’ with an agreement ‘that does not represent the Brexit for which they voted’. But Mrs May was supported by James Cartlidge (Con, S Suffolk). His question began with ‘in all my time as a mortgage broker’. Cue a stream of raspberries and mirth. How unchristian of the House.