Some blinked. Some gasped. Cognitive dissonance takes on many forms. Conservative Chris Philp is best known in the Commons for never letting any bum go unkissed and certainly not as a man to put a point of principle before his career, yet here he was sounding every bit the voice of remain dissent as he urged the prime minister to publish a Brexit white paper. Then the prime minister spoke and all became clear. Philp was just a convenient stooge to allow Theresa May to casually declare that the government would be publishing a white paper after all.
You could forgive Jeremy Corbyn for being momentarily wrongfooted. Prime minister’s questions are usually no more than a playground for personality disorders and not the forum in which serious policy announcements are made. But once he’d recovered from the shock, he should have been punching the air.
This hadn’t been a great few days for Theresa. And it had all been entirely of her own making. First she couldn’t remember whether one of our submarines had accidentally tried to nuke the Americans, and then the supreme court had reminded her that a referendum wasn’t an invitation to ignore constitutional law. Now she had just made it all even worse by appearing to do something David Davis, the Brexit secretary, had specifically told the Commons the government wouldn’t be doing the day before, because only someone who was an enemy of the people would consider such a thing.
A half-agile mind might have questioned the prime minister’s judgment. Or at least passed comment on the shambles of the past week. Instead, Corbyn achieved the near impossible of making the prime minister look more like a decisive world leader than a badly programmed robot. Corbyn looked at his notes and panicked. He’d planned his entire attack around the government’s refusal to grant a Brexit white paper and now he had nothing much to say.
So when are we getting this white paper then? he eventually asked. Theresa shrugged. Give her a break. She’d only come up with the idea a few minutes ago and wasn’t yet entirely clear whether it was going to replace the bill to trigger article 50 or supplement it. If he was to get back to her in 20 minutes or so, her advisers might by then have got round to passing her a note informing her of what she had decided.
“I simply asked when the white paper might come out,” said Corbyn, huffily. If he had left it at that and passed on his last four questions, he might have come out of PMQs with a goalless draw. A leader of the opposition not asking questions of a prime minister who hates answering them might have made for interesting Noh theatre.
Instead, Corbyn chose to use his time to repeat his “bargain basement tax haven” line several times. Largely because this is the only thing about Brexit on which the Labour party is able to agree. But it’s also not something that overly concerns Theresa as most Tories aspire to tax haven status, so she was able to get away with saying she would be trying to get the best possible deal for Britain. Which may or may not include becoming a tax haven. What should have been a disaster for Theresa had turned out to be something of a triumph.
Theresa was on slightly less secure ground when boasting about her forthcoming visit to the US. Being the first foreign leader – after Nigel Farage and Michael Gove – to meet President Trump may be less of a sign of the special relationship than a symptom of the reluctance of the rest of the world to get too close to the unstable narcissist too early in the game. Rather, the visit has the feeling of two rejects from a third-rate matchmaking agency’s slush pile going on a blind date. Not even Theresa May can seriously believe she is going to come away with a brilliant trade deal from a president whose commitment to America First couldn’t be clearer.
“I won’t be afraid of asking President Trump awkward questions,” Theresa insisted. That’s good, chipped in the SNP’s Angus Robertson, who is consistently proving himself to be a more able leader of the opposition. “Will we be importing beef injected with growth hormones and chlorinated chickens?” he asked. Theresa thought about it and decided that maybe that question was just a little too awkward.
Right at the end, Ed Miliband rose to ask whether she would be insisting the US abide by the Paris climate change agreement. Theresa dithered. That too might be a little too awkward. “I’ve rather missed this,” said Miliband. A lot of Labour heads nodded in agreement. So had they. It’s come to this.
• This article was amended on 27 January 2017. An earlier version used the word “reticence” where “reluctance” was meant.
