On the bright side, Theresa May got her margin of defeat down into the high double figures. But long before the votes were counted, the Leader in Name Only knew the game was up. Waiting to make the closing speech, her eyes were vacant, her body shrunken. She was a shell, all but absent in both mind and body. The black hole of Brexit had almost totally consumed her.
Lino wasn’t battling for her political life. That effectively ended when she announced her planned resignation earlier in the week. But when it came down to it, she didn’t even have the self-worth to fight for her self-respect. Her appeals to party and country were half-hearted at best. A mere going through the motions of someone whose final act of sacrifice was comprehensively rejected. It was never a choice between her or her deal. It was both. The ultimate humiliation.
The hardline Brexiters were as good as their word. There was no Brexit they could vote for. Bill Cash, Steve Baker, Owen Paterson and John Redwood had been very clear about that. They had devoted their lives to fighting those bastard Johnny Foreigners in Brussels and they weren’t going to let Brexit stop them. Imagine a life with nothing to moan about; nothing to get out of bed for. Without the EU, life was a meaningless void. They were the parasites who couldn’t survive without their host.
Once the result was declared, Lino stood up to give her losing statement. She’s getting so good at them that she hadn’t even bothered to write a winning one this time. Her voice was no more than a dull monotone. The Maybot on life support. Once again her language function didn’t even run to binary.
She knew she had lost, but that was about it. She didn’t have a vision because she never had. Lino was right out of ideas. She’d see what happened during the second round of indicative votes and then do something else. Probably bring back more or less the same deal that had now been voted down three times. When in doubt, crash yourself and revert to default settings. Besides, one more defeat wouldn’t be so bad. Brexit had got her hooked on failure.
Even Geoffrey Cox sounded flat when he opened the debate. His usual ringing baritone was flattened around the edges. A once great actor was now no more than an end-of-the-pier tribute act; a diminished ham playing to near empty houses. And no one knew better than the attorney general that the part he’d been given was a dud.
Trying to separate the withdrawal agreement from the political declaration was never likely to fool anyone. Especially, the Labour leavers whom Cox was sent out to woo. Why would anyone trust a government that had repeatedly proved itself to be untrustworthy and which would soon have a leader whom they trusted even less than the last one?
The rest of the five-hour debate was mostly a refrain of all the others. After nearly three years, most MPs have long since said everything they had to say about Brexit. Like Lino, they too are now on repeat. The one exception was Dominic Raab who stood up to say that you would still need to be insane to support an exit deal as bad as the one the government had negotiated. But because he now realised he was clinically certifiable, he was going to vote for it. It was the first time anyone had ever launched a leadership bid by effectively ending it. His last remaining cohort of Spartans who would never take yes for an answer would never trust him again. A small win on the day.
This was the day when Big Ben was supposed to ring at 11pm to mark the UK’s departure from the EU. When the Red (white and blue) Arrows did a fly past. When new 50p coins were worth 40p. Instead, we were back in a looking-glass world where everyone knew less than they did before. It can’t be long before no one knows anything. Back to the future.
Everything was up for grabs in Schrödinger’s Brexit: when we were leaving, if we were leaving and how we were leaving; who would be the prime minister, and if there would be a general election. Anything and everything was still possible. Parliament had said something but no one could interpret the language it was speaking. A delegation of ministers was going to No 10 to speak to Lino, but there was no guarantee she would be there. She is lost even unto herself.
There was just one certainty. By voting with the government, Boris Johnson had traded his principles for his career. But then we had always known he would. Johnson’s untrustworthiness is the only solid thing the country has left to hang on to. A Newtonian rock in a Quantum Brexit. We really are that far up shit creek.
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