The Commons got back to business after the summer recess with a deadening sense of deja vu. The House broke up in July with the Brexit secretary trying to convince himself as much as anyone else that the UK was genuinely getting somewhere in the EU negotiations, and it returned to find him doing much the same thing.
Dominic Raab was ostensibly in the House to give a statement updating MPs on the progress of his recent talks with Michel Barnier but, as there hadn’t been any, he chose instead to ad lib. The break has been kind to the Brexit secretary. In July, he looked tense and sweaty and would get tetchy if anyone dared contradict him, but now he appeared more urbane and confident at the dispatch box.
Unfortunately for him, it was the confidence of a man who had forgotten just how sidelined and out of his depth he really was.
Everything was going really well, Raab declared breathlessly. Apart from the bits that were going extremely badly. The talks had been injected with a new pace and intensity – they now ate sandwiches at the negotiating table rather than taking a two-hour break for lunch – and agreement had been reached in some key areas. The EU and the UK had settled on who would do the photocopying (they would take it in turns) and only semi-skimmed milk would be used for the coffee.
There were still a few problems, mind. Northern Ireland was still proving a bit tricky but he was sure it would get resolved one way or another without war breaking out. There again, maybe not. On the bright side, a no-deal wouldn’t be as bad as all that. We would be keeping a six-week stockpile of medicines, so there was a fair chance that no one would die unnecessarily immediately. And if everyone put aside a few cans of baked beans, then no one should starve while the government tried to come up with a better plan.
“There are some risks to a no-deal scenario,” Raab generously conceded. But, one way or another, the UK would be ready for Brexit next March. His voice rather tailed off as he added that last bit, as he realised the fundamental absurdity of what he was saying. The UK is going to be ready for nothing. The only Brexit we are going to get is the one the government manages to smuggle past both the EU and parliament. And right now it doesn’t have a clue what that might be.
Keir Starmer sighed. The shadow Brexit secretary had hoped that Raab might prove to be a bit brighter than the dim David Davis, but there was clearly something about the nature of the job that reduced every incumbent to the lowest common denominator of stupidity. Still, Starmer was willing to do his job even if Raab wasn’t up to doing his, so he read out the same checklist of questions that he always asked on these occasions. Questions he knew weren’t going to be answered.
Was Raab aware that time was running out to get a deal? In July he had said he would have the outline of a deal by October. Now he was suggesting it would come in November at the earliest. When was he going to get round to dealing with Northern Ireland? And was he aware that saying a no-deal wouldn’t be the end of the world wasn’t the most inspiring rhetoric?
The Brexit secretary bristled. He doesn’t like having his obvious shortcomings pointed out so forensically. He was doing better than Labour would have, he snapped. Hard to refute, but equally hard to believe.
There was one upside for Raab. As everyone knows that it is now the prime minister who is calling the shots and the Brexit secretary has less authority than the four pot plants, none of the big-name Tories such as Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Ken Clarke and Anna Soubry, bothered to turn up to give him a hard time. The worst of the friendly fire was the deranged Owen Paterson insisting that Northern Ireland could easily be sorted out with technology that hadn’t been invented yet. Someone call a doctor.
So it was left to Labour’s Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna to deliver a few home truths. The Chequers deal was dead in the water. Barnier said so. The Tory right said so. And Labour said so. So wouldn’t the government be better off coming up with a new plan and working out what it was going to do if it couldn’t get any deal through parliament.
“Ssssh,” whispered Raab. This was the kind of careless talk that could cost lives if the EU got wind of it. At this point some MPs began to wonder if Raab actually had been born yesterday.
