It’s 9.30am on day three – or day six, if you count December’s false start – in the Big Brother house and almost all the contestants are still in bed. Parliament may have broken with tradition to sit on a Friday to debate the EU withdrawal bill but MPs weren’t going to let that spoil their weekend. Brexit, what Brexit? The Commons chamber was more like an echo chamber. You get a bigger crowd for an adjournment debate on the illegal trade of seahorses.
Sajid Javid certainly didn’t look best pleased to be called upon to resume the debate. The Sajid has his eyes on becoming prime minister one day in the not too distant future, and an early morning, end-of-the pier gig in front of a barely conscious audience of a few dozen had not been part of his planned career trajectory. He should have been doing stadium tours by now.
The home secretary languidly uncoiled himself to take his place at the despatch box. If no one else was going to make an effort, then why should he? So rather than deliver a new speech, making the case for accepting Theresa May’s deal, he chose instead to go through the motions by making much the same one he had given when announcing the government’s immigration policy several weeks previously. Only he managed to do it worse. An achievement of sorts. When he comes to look back on today, The Saj will be grateful so few MPs were there to witness his performance.
Most people had voted to leave the EU because they wanted more control over immigration, he began, apparently unaware that many Conservatives who were backing the prime minister’s deal had argued the exact opposite the previous day. Luckily they weren’t in the chamber to correct him.
The country needed a policy that would simultaneously ban and welcome immigration, he declared. Not for the first time, Schrodinger’s Brexit was being presented as credible government policy. The Saj was going to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands by not allowing anyone into the country who earned less than about £30,000 but would still keep the NHS and the hospitality and agriculture sectors running by letting people in who earned considerably less. Suck on that.
What made this still more depressing was that The Saj clearly knew he was talking bollocks but didn’t much care one way or the other. And nor did anyone else. We have reached the point where no one really expects a minister to be coherent about Brexit any more. Minds have long since been made up and MPs are at liberty to construct their own alternative realities.
Diane Abbott being a prime example. Her reply was a classic of the genre. First she appeared to have printed out her speech in the wrong order, frequently ignoring huge chunks of text by turning over several pages at a time. Perhaps the early start had also caught her on the hop. Or maybe she had decided that, on reflection, she too was a bit bored with talking about Brexit.
Then she went full Ukip by citing an intelligence report by former MI6 and defence chiefs that had ended with the suggestion the UK would be better off leaving the EU with no deal. It was almost as if she had no idea of Labour’s Brexit policy. There again, few people do.
The most heartfelt speech was made by the Conservative Nicholas Soames, who has spent the past 35 years trying to channel the ghost of his grandfather, Winston Churchill. Only without ever achieving quite the passion or the plausibility. Soames insisted the public wouldn’t forgive the Commons for any delay – one wonders what he imagines May has been doing all this time – and that a vote against the deal would be a vote for chaos. Because everything was going so smoothly now …
Thereafter it was a matter of MPs using the time to wind down the clock with their favourite Brexit soundbites. The war. Maastricht. Vassal state. The war. Second referendum. Few people bothered to interrupt, mostly because no one was listening. This wasn’t a debate so much as a procedural formality. The Commons had promised it would fill the time and that was one promise everyone would keep.
Nor did the closing speeches offer any enlightenment. Because there had been so few Labour MPs in the house, Emily Thornberry was able to name-check each and every one of them without ever giving any real indication she was entirely sure she knew why she was there. She could have sworn she was meant to have been at lunch. In reply, Jeremy Hunt kept things short and sweet. The bad deal was the best deal because it was the only deal. The government had been consistent on this. Consistently inconsistent. Would that do? Under the circumstances, it would.
