Mrs May’s silence on Brexit speaks volumes

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Is the Government actually going to offer Nigel Farage a job? The other day, a spokesman suggested it was out of the question. But after PMQs, I’m not so sure.

“Can the Prime Minister confirm or deny,” asked George Kerevan (SNP, East Lothian), “that there have been official conversations about giving Nigel Farage a peerage?”

Theresa May rose. “All I can say,” she replied, “is that such matters are normally never discussed in public.”

An intriguing answer. After all, she didn’t have to put it like that. She could, for example, have put it like this: “Nigel Farage, Mr Speaker? Why, of course he wouldn’t be offered a peerage – for the simple reason that a man of his integrity would stoutly refuse.

“I need hardly remind the House that Mr Farage has nobly dedicated his entire career to freeing the British people from the rule of unelected elites. So to imply that he would wish to join an unelected ruling elite is a slur upon his good name.

“I hope, Mr Speaker, that the honourable member did not mean to insinuate that Mr Farage is some kind of chancer, a spiv, a fraud, a leering little hypocrite who would seek to gull the public with a load of opportunistic anti-Establishment humbug only to abandon his democratic principles at the first sniff of power. Because nothing, as this House well knows, could be further from the truth.”

As I say: Mrs May could have put it like that. But she didn’t. Which means the offer of a peerage is a genuine possibility. Not that it matters, of course, because we already know what Mr Farage’s answer would be.

Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, asked about Mrs May’s plans for Brexit.

MPs, said the Labour leader, weren’t the only ones in the dark. The Europeans were, too. He quoted an Italian minister, who’d said of the Government’s Brexit demands: “Somebody needs to tell us something, and it needs to be something that makes sense.”

Mrs May retorted that this was simply a cunning ploy by the EU to make us reveal our negotiating hand. Falling into their trap would guarantee that Britain got a rotten deal. “And that’s why we won’t do it!”

Her MPs cheered, although presumably they realise that sooner or later – such as, say, during the negotiations – she will actually have to tell the EU what she wants. Then again, maybe she won’t.

Maybe her plan for the negotiations is to sit down at the table and then say absolutely nothing. Literally nothing, for hours on end, until day fades into night and then back into day – and the fat cats of Brussels, driven half-mad with sleepless desperation, offer her anything she wants, anything at all, just to bring this weird and miserable ordeal to an end.

I know journalists who have taken Mrs May out to lunch. They say this scenario is all too chillingly believable.