Will she resign, demanded the Eurosceptic Skeletor. I think you know the answer, she chuckled
Watches a battle-weary PM face down bandidos who’ve got her in their sights
Good ol’ westerns often show an ailing cowboy crawling through a desert. As the camera pans out, we see a canteen discarded half a mile back. His mouth is parched, lips chapped as prunes and he is sucking what we assume to be his final breaths.
Up above vultures hover and our hero gives one last heave of his body to prop himself up against a boulder.
Raising a clenched fist skywards toward his would-be attackers, he defiantly croaks: ‘I ain’t finished yet!’
The Prime Minister is not finished yet. A late night of negotiations in Brussels had clearly taken its toll when she addressed the Commons yesterday. Her features were drawn and her eyes like puffballs. Unwisely, she also wore what looked remarkably like an undertaker’s coat.
But for now, still warm is the blood that courses through her veins. However, it is clear that
many on her own benches would like to see otherwise.
Yet another humiliating Brexit delay has made her a dead woman walkin’. daggers weren’t so much unsheathed in the chamber yesterday afternoon as they were being flung angrily in her direction.
did any make contact? Not quite. But today begins an 11-day Parliamentary recess. Plenty of time for those rowdy bandidos to hone their aim.
Mrs May had come to update the House after extending Brexit until the end of october. Blue-on-blue enemies, that is to say Brexit hardnuts from the ERG, surrounded her. Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, West Somerset) chatted beside Boris Johnson (Con, Uxbridge).
Steve Baker (Con, Wycombe) who has the intense gaze of a man who enjoys torturing insects, perched menacingly in front. Forming a pincer movement on the upper east side of the chamber stewed Sgt Major Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh).
Cue Ennio Morricone soundtrack: oo-ee-oo-ee-oo, wah-WHA-wha!’
The PM once again expressed profound regret at failing to deliver Brexit on schedule, acknowledging the frustration both the public and MPs were feeling over the whole sorry mess. Getting it done, however, remained her top priority.
Those loyalest of Prime Ministerial terriers, Housing Minister James Brokenshire and Culture secretary Jeremy Wright, neither likely to be troubling any leadership ballot paper, yapped along approvingly.
Boris, meanwhile, slouched like an ageing duke resting on the lav, looked theatrically at his wristwatch. How much more of this lachrymose guff was his message.
To his left, confrontational Mark Pritchard (Con, The
Wrekin) removed a fleck of lint from his trousering with mild disgust.
By the time the PM sat down, her backbenchers rose almost as one to try and speak. Clearly, they had a lot to get off their chests.
Once Jeremy Corbyn had done his shouty chaos/incompetence/ diplomatic failure bit, the Speaker called Eurosceptic Skeletor Sir William Cash (Con, Stone). Wah-WAH-wah!
‘Abject surrender’ was how he described the Prime Minister’s extension. ‘Will she resign?’ The PM tried to laugh it off. ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ she chuckled. Still, a marker had been put down. Further jibes. Stareyeyed Baker asked her if she would ask Labour to prop up her coalition Government if the DUP abandons her. Sergeant Major Francois, red as rhubarb, growled: ‘Patience is virtue. But sheer obstinacy is not.’ The house collapsed into giggles at this observation.
FRANCOIS and his Kamikaze chums, of course, have obstinately refused to back Mrs May’s Brexit deal even when it became clear we are now faced with an even softer Brexit. Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough)
reminded Mrs May that she informed the House last month she could not consider a Brexit delay beyond June 30 as long as she was Prime Minister. How was she going to honour that commitment? The PM said she had every intention of getting a deal through by then.
I, for one, would happily open a book on that.
At just after 3.30pm, Mrs May made a dash for it. She and Philip are off on a much-needed walking holiday to Wales, or so the Westminster grapevine claims.
She ain’t done for quite yet. But I couldn’t help make out the faint silhouette of a target on her back.