Man down. Again. Ministers are now resigning quicker than Theresa May can get round to finding someone to replace them. But Chris Heaton-Harris, the junior minister in the Brexit department who left government on Wednesday over the Leader in Name Only’s decision to appoint Jeremy Corbyn as interim prime minister, will be missed less than most. Not because he was particularly bad at his job but because his job never really existed in the first place.
The Brexit department has become the government’s meta joke. It exists purely so it can be seen to exist. A metaphor for the absence of power. The sole function of Stephen Barclay, Robin Walker and Kwasi Kwarteng – the three remaining Brexit ministers – is entirely decorative. Their jobs are non jobs. McJobs. They may get smart cars, large offices and phones to play games on, but in return they are expected to, wherever possible, smile nicely and say nothing. Something they by and large do very well.
The McMinisters know it, everyone knows it. There was a time before everyone wised up to the existential futility of the department, that several hundred MPs would turn up for Brexit questions. On the morning after the Commons had passed Yvette Cooper’s bill to force the government to seek an extension to article 50 in the event of no deal, there were barely a handful of Tory MPs in the chamber to hear Barclay explain how the government planned to react.
No Grand Wizard of Mogg. No Steve Baker. No Bill Cash. Not even Mark Francois, the bloated blowhard of the paramilitary wing of the ERG who has yet to find something he can’t get red-faced about. Just a few stragglers who hadn’t had a home to go to when the Commons adjourned the previous night. The opposition benches were rather fuller. Just for the entertainment value.
Barclay looked tired and fed up. On previous outings, he has always maintained a veneer of professional competence. Now his confidence is shattered and can barely bring himself to go through the motions. No, he didn’t have a clue what was going to happen. Who did?
He couldn’t give any guarantee that the UK wouldn’t have to take part in European elections. Or about anything else. But if he did find anything out, he’d be sure to let people know. Only everyone else would probably hear about it long before he did. He was always the last to know.
And yes, he’d do his best to make sure no one died as a result of Brexit. But hey! No promises. England expects and all that. Keir Starmer looked across the dispatch box and bit his lip. In an hour or so, he was going to have to join the Brexit secretary for further cross-party talks that everyone knew were inevitably going to break down but he wanted to keep things sweet for as long as possible.
But Barclay is a rank amateur in the haplessness stakes compared to his junior. Kwarteng began by saying he was confident … er, make that hopeful … er, make that desperate … the government would get a deal through, and it was all downhill from there. “The question I would like to ask myself …” he continued. Various Labour MPs gently pointed out that the purpose of departmental questions was for MPs to interrogate ministers, but Kwarteng wasn’t having any of that. The question he wanted to ask was: “Why him?” One that required no answer. He is a round peg in a round hole.
“We are not zombies,” Kwarteng protested. Though you could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Then again, the Commons was rather more animated than the Lords, where a bunch of Brexiter Tory peers with an average age of 80 were doing their best to rail against the tyranny of the people by using a succession of procedural devices to prevent the upper chamber from even reaching a decision on the nature of the decision they would be asked to decide on when approving Cooper’s bill. It would pass in the end, but there are some peers for whom eternity can’t come soon enough. Self-inflicted euthanasia.
Shortly before 3pm, parliament began its own fight back. Fed up with the incompetence of its occupants, the building itself turned on the Commons chamber, pouring water in through the ceiling. To the whole country’s relief, proceedings were adjourned for the day. We all just needed a break. We’d had the flood. Bring on the blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, pestilence, boils, hail and fire, darkness and death of the firstborn. They couldn’t be any worse than Brexit.
