Time for MPs to end the silly season and get seriously behind the PM

It’s the silly season. Psycho seagulls. Cows on the run. Sharks off Cornwall. And the silliness has spread from the papers to Parliament. Exhibit A: the Lucas Cabinet. The dual qualifications of membership being that you have to have a brassiere and a Brexit aversion. Does an overqualification in the former compensate for an absence of the latter? I wonder.

Then there’s Corbyn’s GNU. The Government of National Mutiny. Oops, I mean Mutual Agony – or was it Notional Unity? It’s an exotic sort of push-me-pull-you where the person who has been least effective for longest (and thus with the fewest enemies) takes over, supported by other fencesitters. The plan certainly had the BBC excited. Many broadcast hours were devoted to it this week.

We’ve also been kept busy debating just how big a bounder the former chancellor really is. Following his latest intervention, Philip Hammond stands accused of preventing – by design or accident – the necessary conditions for securing a good deal from the EU. To be specific, proper no-deal preparations and a narrative which would have convinced the EU of our resolve to complete Brexit and damn the torpedoes.

How we got into this mess can be summed up by the knights who say no. Sir Bernard Jenkin says no to the EU (I’m with him on that). Sir Malcolm Rifkind says no to no deal (I’ve some sympathy). Sir Ed Davey says no to Brexit. Sir Keir Starmer just says no to everything and everyone but Jezza.

In three years, we’ve learnt nothing – but we’ve also forgotten nothing.

The actions of some in the previous government will soon be known: the unhelpful spin; the briefing to members of foreign governments that our attempts to leave were just theatre and the crisis mere artifice; the good work done by the civil service to prepare for no deal being hidden from the public and key decision-takers. All this was so we couldn’t leave, but politicians couldn’t be blamed for it.

Counterproductive and unhelpful, all this just made no deal more likely despite the good intentions of those responsible. Their actions were, after all, an attempt to protect the UK from what they saw as a disaster – either a no-deal Brexit or, for some, any form of Brexit at all. They thought that the world and Britain’s prospects in it were better served by our country being at the heart of Europe, able to compete with emerging superpowers of the future. They feared too that without us as part of the EU, the reform the bloc so needed would never come to pass.

They also wanted to avoid spending money on no-deal scenario plans they believed would never come to pass due to the Parliamentary arithmetic.

For some, a sense of responsibility towards their constituents prevented them from entertaining no deal, or in some cases any form of Brexit, even as their electorate asked for it. For others – on the opposition benches – gaining a political advantage has clearly been the motivation.

Now they are meeting the resulting national crisis with Westminster groupthink.

Sure, we can simply state that we’ve no mandate for no deal, or expect a GNU or second vote to get us out of this situation. Maybe try the Lucas Ladies Love-in?

My message to MPs is this: Brexit is going to happen, one way or another.

If you don’t know that, then you don’t know the British people. Now, the only way to avoid no deal, is to get a deal. And to get a deal you need to back the Prime Minister, even though you might not have chosen him and he may not be your triple venti soy no-foam latte. He, and the success of his efforts, are the only shot you now have at avoiding no deal.

Say you voted time and again for May’s deal. Say the ERG behaved badly. Say you did your best to deliver the referendum result.

You can’t now give up on helping and sit around criticising the new PM’s efforts. Similarly, beating up Philip Hammond is displacement activity.

If you want to protect our economy from the struggles no deal will bring; if you want a strong collaborative Europe to be a force for good in the world; if you want certainty for business and citizens; if you want the EU to pay more attention to the needs of its remaining nations …

Above all, if you want what is best for your country – as much of the upside to Brexit and the least of the down – then apply all your efforts in the coming weeks to securing a deal.

Enough silly season; it’s time Westminster got serious.

‘My message is that Brexit is going to happen. If you don’t know that, you don’t know the British people’

Penny Mordaunt is Conservative MP for Portsmouth North