After the panto, the hangover. The Commons was in a subdued mood for the last day of school before Christmas. Both the pupils and the supply teacher, Mr Bercow, understood that everyone might have had a few too many bevvies the day before and that things had been said or not said – everyone had been so out of it no one could be 100% certain of anything – so an uneasy truce had been called.
The Tory gang wouldn’t mention that the head of the Labour gang might have muttered “stupid woman” under his breath. Just so long as Labour didn’t bring up the fact that the head girl had restored the party whip to two of her backbenchers allegedly involved in sex scandals in order to nudge her vote up to the vague respectability of the 200 mark in the no confidence vote. While Andrea Leadsom and Bercow restored their own personal relationship to their normal acceptable levels of passive aggression.
Leadsom made a point of avoiding eye contact with Bercow, restricting herself to a terse “Good morning Mr Bercow, sir”, before giving a business statement, providing the class with a list of its homework for the first week back in the new year. On the first Wednesday they would return to the European withdrawal bill. As they would on the Thursday. And possibly on the Friday too.
The few Tories in the classroom gasped. Working on a Friday was most irregular. Leadsom hastily rifled though the following days of her diary just to make sure they were blank. Fortunately they were. So that was that. She shrugged apologetically. She had absolutely no idea what would be happening for the rest of the term. Think of it as a nice surprise. Que sera, sera.
Valerie Vaz was underwhelmed. The shadow leader of the house wanted to know if the Brexit debate would be a resumption of the old one that the head girl had cut short after having a strop, or a new one completely. And whether pupils who had been allowed to speak in the first debate would be allowed to have another go in the second. Most importantly she wanted a guarantee that there would definitely be a meaningful vote in the following week.
Questions, questions. Leadsom could feel her headache rapidly developing into a migraine. Where was the morphine when she needed it? She sighed. The diary had nothing in it. How much clearer could she be? She didn’t have a clue whether the debate was going to be the old one or a new one. That all depended on whether the prime minister was deluded enough to imagine she could negotiate a new deal that the EU had already said was non-negotiable in between Christmas and New Year.
Somewhere from the emptiness of what passed for her mind, Leadsom managed to drag up a few factoids. The Dominic Grieve amendment on stopping a no-deal Brexit would have to stand as no one in the government had yet found a way of blocking it. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Because what she wanted most of all was for everyone to go home and take so many drugs over their 17 days’ holiday that they would have totally forgotten why they disliked the head girl’s deal on their return. And if the goody-goody Four Pot Plants still wanted a vote then they could have one some time in April.
Over in Lancaster House, the head girl was hosting an exchange visit with the head boy of Poland. Theresa May wouldn’t normally have wanted to been seen out and about with such a notoriously illiberal figure, but prolonged exposure to the DUP had worn her down. Besides, she needed every friendly face from the EU she could get.
“Tak, na pewno możecie zostać,” said May. A statement that, loosely translated, meant that all Poles were welcome to stay in the UK after Brexit providing they were the right kind of Poles who earned £30,000 or more. The Polish head boy, Mateusz Morawiecki, responded by thanking the UK for its more than generous hospitality and reminding the prime minister that the withdrawal agreement was the only one on the table and that she had better get used to it.
May’s shoulders slumped so that she was almost bent double. She had laid on the full state lunch and still no joy. “I am very clear that we are clear that we are focusing on delivering the deal no one can agree upon,” she said in a tired monotone. Thank God 2018 was nearly over. It was just a pity that 2019 was shaping up to be so much worse.
