It was Britain at its most British. In any other country, the sight of 11 MPs – eight from Labour and three from the Tories – taking their seats next to the DUP on the opposition benches for the first time as the Independent Group (TIG) for prime minister’s questions might have caused a stir. Or even a comment. Instead everyone was determined to keep any embarrassment to a minimum. Don’t mention the war, don’t mention the war.
Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn restricted their exchanges entirely to Brexit. As a non-aggression pact rather than a serious line of inquiry. On any other day, Brexit might have been awkward for the two party leaders – it hardly counts as a specialist subject for either of them – but now it was more of a pleasant fireside chat. Anything to keep away from the main issue of Labour and the Tories haemorrhaging MPs.
Not that we actually learned anything new about Brexit – other than the prime minister still didn’t have a clue what she was doing and was staking her career, what was left of it, on Geoffrey Cox doing the decent thing and giving a guarded thumbs up to whatever non-legally, legally binding fudge she could come up with in the next week.
How was it all going, Corbyn asked. Oh you know, May replied. As well as could be expected. Nice weather we’ve been having. That was the interrogation at its most incisive. Thereafter, both leaders danced on eggshells. Corbyn was so set on maintaining a polite atmosphere that he even found himself praising the record of the Blair-Brown government. Something he’s never knowingly done before. He’s going to hate himself when he watches a video replay of his performance. Much more of this and he could even split from himself. An unconscious uncoupling.
The closest anyone came to mentioning that which could not be mentioned was when Conservative Maria Caulfield raised the case of a Labour councillor who had defected to the Tories. “Yes, yes,” May said brusquely. This was the big split on everyone’s lips. Now could we please not bring it up again? The omertà was intact. Even the 11 TIG MPs felt bound by it. None tried to ask a question and instead just chatted happily among themselves. PMQs was just symptomatic of a broken politics, man. One day they might get round to asking May what her favourite colour was, but for now they would rebel in silence. Anarchy in the UK. I mean it, man.
Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry were more talkative at a press conference shortly after PMQs to announce their defection. There were rather fewer hacks at this one than had been at the Labour do on Monday – seen one split, seen them all – but the breakaway 11 almost became the breakaway 10 when one of the chairs collapsed as they were surrounded by photographers. Fortunately no great damage was done and once the debris had been cleared, Allen stood up to speak.
The Labour S Club 7 event had been a funereal affair, with each MP in turn using their five minute slot to share their experience, strength and despair in a group therapy session for rough-sleeping politicians. Allen was determined to put the party back into the party that was not yet willing to call itself a party. She was a woman reborn. She had been delusional ever to join the Conservatives, as she couldn’t think of one good thing they had ever done. Now she was her own person, the real Heidi. She could dare to dream. Her X Factor pitch was oddly uplifting.
Wollaston was more measured – delivering her terminal diagnosis on the state of the Tory party with the solemnity you would expect of a doctor – while Soubry just went for it. Few MPs give better rants than her.
The Conservatives had been taken over by anti-EU zealots from top to toe. People like her – and there were many others thinking of jumping ship, she insisted – had been utterly marginalised as the ERG had taken the prime minister hostage. Enough was enough. The revolution started here. And it would be televised.
Soubry was less convincing when she recalled memories of the halcyon days of David Cameron. Not even the shed-bound Dave is that deluded. Then again he has yet to reach the point in his memoirs where he became prime minister, imposed austerity and split the country with a referendum that only a handful of his own MPs wanted. Writer’s block. He’s stuck in the bromance of the Rose Garden.
Rather more revealing was all three women revealing that neither the prime minister nor the whips’ office had made any effort to dissuade them from defecting. They just weren’t that bothered whether they stayed or left. More trouble than they were worth. Better to have fewer of the right kind of MPs. The true believers. The Tories and Labour were a lot closer than they liked to think.
