Yahoo News Rees-Mogg breaks broken news to a horrified house
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. This is not a sketch. Just as Magritte played with traditional conventions of words, images and meaning, so modern politics works in reverse. The surreal has become fully integrated back into the real. So much so, it’s almost impossible to distinguish between the two. If a train were to emerge from one of the fireplaces inside Westminster palace, no one would bat an eyelid. Other than to express surprise that it was on time. Chris Grayling’s legacy lives on. The sketch has become more or less straightforward reporting.
There was a time when prime ministers took their responsibilities seriously. When an appearance before the liaison committee – the supergroup of chairs of all select committees – was an ordeal set in stone. No prime minister enjoyed being asked difficult questions to which they often had to evade the answer, but the session was understood to be part of the job.
Boris Johnson sees things rather differently. He knows he can’t survive 15 minutes of forensic questioning, let alone a full two hours, so with barely 12 hours’ notice he cancelled his Thursday morning date with the liaison committee. For the third time. Rather than a formal apology or explanation, he merely scribbled a quick note to Sarah Wollaston, the committee chair, on a crumpled sheet of paper.
“Soz I can’t be there,” he wrote. “It’s been a busy week and I could do without the hassle. I rather fancy taking Dilyn for a walk instead. Maybe I’ll come and see you in five or six months if I can be arsed. And either of us are a still in a job. Ring my people to fix a date that I can later miss. Yours, whateva.” Classic Dom high-fived him – what was the point of regaining UK sovereignty only to waste it on democratic processes? – before pissing in the waste paper basket. Toilets were for wimps.
The clear-up process took up most of the day. First, Stephen Barclay had to answer an urgent question on customs declarations between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain, after the prime minister had insisted there wouldn’t be any.
“Um, er,” said the Brexit secretary. Well there would be some forms, he mumbled, and there would be extra expense and delay. But if everyone just worked a bit harder, reduced their prices by £55 and dispatched the goods across the border 30 minutes earlier, no one would notice the difference. Try not to think of it as border checks so much as an opportunity to get to know the people working at HMRC a little better. Barclay’s know-nothing shtick isn’t an affectation. He genuinely does know nothing. It’s been the secret to his political survival.
Next up was Jacob Rees-Mogg, the idiot’s idea of a thinking man, to provide details of the Commons’ business for the coming week. “The government is committed to leaving the EU on October 31st,” he smirked. And how was it planning to do this? By debating the environmentally friendly way to give a cockapoo a haircut and introducing legislation to force the French to drive on the left-hand side of the road. That way there might be fewer delays at Calais post Brexit.
Of the withdrawal agreement bill there was no sign. “They seek it here, they seek it there,” Rees-Mogg laughed, working himself up into a state of visible arousal at his own Divine Comedy. For a man who used to pride himself on his sincerity and probity, lying and S&M cosplay have become second nature. He must have a very accommodating arrangement with the priest at confession.
Finally, we arrived at the tail end of the Queen’s speech debate. Normally an occasion of high drama but now, thanks to the government’s total dysfunctionality, a mere sideshow. John McDonnell used his speech to lament the lack of any economic impact assessments of the new Brexit deal– other than the independent ones that showed the country being 8% worse off.
Sajid Javid was outraged. The deal was so self-evidently good that no impact assessments were required. Besides, he had had an email from a Nigerian prince saying the country would be £350bn better off per week. All the government had to do was send details of the Treasury’s bank account.
Come the final vote, there was almost no one in the Commons. It was all meaningless, whether it passed or failed. None of it would happen anyway. Everything was just a chimera. An election was coming.
Sure enough, later that day Johnson gave TV interviews in which he claimed that parliament had both backed his deal and blocked it – mutual incompatibility is no deterrent to a pathological liar – and demanded a general election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act on 12 December. Any dead cat to distract from the fact he had rather lost enthusiasm for dying in a ditch.
The Sulk didn’t bother coming to the Commons to make the announcement himself, as he was lost in his alternate realities. So it was left to Rees-Mogg to break the news that had already broken. In reply, Valerie Vaz said Labour would make up its mind about what to do once no deal was off the table and an extension had formally been granted. And when the battle raging inside the party over whether a pre-Christmas election was a suicide mission had been resolved.
Many MPs on both sides of the house looked horrified at the prospect of an election – the Tories could take a hammering in London, Scotland and the south-west – but Rees-Mogg just wallowed in the moment. Being in equal parts condescending and patronising to all concerned. Lost in his solipsistic bubble. Nanny would be giving him a ticking off later. Who knows, Rees-Mogg might just turn out to be Labour’s strongest electoral asset.
But for the moment we were back where we started. No one really knew anything. Just another day in paradise.
