The Daily Telegraph

Last time at the Dispatch Box but, like Schwarzene­gger, will he be back?

- By Madeline Grant

It was political judgment day for the Prime Minister – the verdicts ranged from Very Good to Appalling. Perhaps the most damning assessment surfaced on a couple of placards that some of the wackier protest groups were waving up and down Whitehall. “Boris knew hydroxychl­oroquine is a cure for Covid”, one cried. “Arrest Boris for treason and genocide”, urged another. But as Bozza entered the Chamber for his valedictor­y PMQS, his backbenche­rs – the toads – erupted into a deafening cheer.

“Yeaaaaaah” they bleated, Judaslike, as if the past few weeks of ferocious back-stabbing had been a mere scratch. Perhaps they felt a pang of guilt, or assassin’s remorse, because they laughed uproarious­ly at every one of the Prime Minister’s jokes and shushed and jeered his critics. For one hour only, the co-conspirato­rs had reformed as an elite Praetorian guard.

Disgraced MP Rob Roberts – once a Tory, now an independen­t – was there, sprawling on the Conservati­ve side, a ghost at the feast – the perfect fusion of

Mr Blobby and Banquo. This was, however, a rather fleshier haunting than that suffered by Macbeth: although the benches were packed, the Tory MPS kept their distance as if in the vicinity of something noisome.

Labour’s Kim Leadbeater launched into a boorish, squawking lecture about standards in public life. On and on she prattled, like a parliament­ary version of Prince Harry, until eventually silenced by the jeering of the newly loyal Tory foot soldiers.

Sir Keir Starmer treated the Commons to his typically agonising attempts to be funny. His adenoidal delivery cued up his jokes with the slow thud of an approachin­g infantry battalion. He compared the Tory leadership race to Eastenders (no doubt the result of some focus-group), and he managed to fluff this too.

Boris bit back with a few trademark

Johnsonism­s – Starmer was “one of those pointless plastic bollards you might find around an abandoned roadworks on a motorway”. As another departing PM once put it, he was enjoying this. The SNP took Labour’s mealy-mouthed unpleasant­ness to still greater heights. The SNP’S Ian Blackford thanked the PM for “driving support for independen­ce” while John Nicolson, typically graceless, asked if the PM will “surpass Harold Wilson with a lavender list of dodgy donors”.

“The house is looking forward to the Prime Minister finishing his book on Shakespear­e,” quipped Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, showing something of Starmer’s undertaker’s gift for one-liners. The Commons groaned. Boris compared him to Polonius, and kept a weather eye on that arras before he launched into a sermon to his backbenche­rs, worthy of

Polonius himself. “Deregulate and cut taxes,” he cried (better late than never). He muttered an oblique, Ides of March warning about the Treasury hampering investment and growth.

And, Johnson’s final words from the Dispatch Box as Prime Minister? “Hasta La Vista, baby!” And with that the Tories stood up and began clapping wildly.

Theresa May grudgingly rose to her feet but kept her arms resolutely pinned to her side. The opposition MPS refused to join in the standing ovation at all. So, hasta la vista, Boris.

But was this really the end, or perhaps, like the Terminator, merely a sign that he’d be back?

Tories clapped wildly. Theresa May grudgingly rose but kept her arms resolutely pinned to her side

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