The PM is abroad. Her vacant throne was occupied by David Lidington, the agreeably lightweight Leader of the House. He’s confident, fast-talking, well-briefed but glib and untidy-looking. He doesn’t improvise well. Physically he’s an unrestful presence. He hops and twitches and pecks and dabs like a pigeon attacking a box of Chicken McNuggets. For comic effect he likes to turn sideways with both arms outstretched as if entreating somebody in the wings. A speaking coach would tell him to calm down, put his hands in his pockets and stop head-butting imaginary bees.
He made no errors today. He didn’t exactly shine. Bumptious competence was his level. Opposite him was Emily Thornberry whose warm buttery voice, like melting fudge, belies her forensic acuity. She subjected him to an artful and sustained cross-examination on the government’s Brexit plans which made him look shifty and reticent. And faintly abusive as well. When she complained that all his answers sounded the same he suggested that repeating himself by rote was the only way to penetrate her feeble intellect. Not very gallant.
He own-goaled it by refused to confirm even the Government’s better advertised positions. Yesterday the Conservatives sent their most senior tea-lady, Oliver Letwin, to the Newsnight studio to reveal that the Government will not seek membership of the Customs Union. But Lidington acted as if this decision were as grave a secret as the code to Fatty Soames’s tuck-box. Thornberry mocked his support for Remain just a few months ago and his warnings that Brexit would lead to chaos and gridlock. ‘Does he still agree with himself?’ Lidington replied that the Labour party were like a crew of bickering sailors who resembled ‘Mutiny on the Bounty re-shot by the Carry On team.’ His most loyal colleagues wheezed out a hoarse snicker at that. Just.
He was harried by two uppity Scots Nats who are miffed that lots of Glasgow’s job centres are being boarded up. Lidington said the number of centres wasn’t as important as their accessibility. But the Nats weren’t having it. Westminster, they seethed, had deliberately targeted the poorest wretches in the realm and chosen to make their awful lives a whole lot grislier. One wonders what the SNP does for its unemployed electors other than demoralise and sideline them as the helpless playthings of capitalist slave-drivers.
Lidington’s path to greatness will be blocked by a simple failing. He lacks the pastoral skills a statesman needs. The solemn look at the policeman’s funeral. The kind word to the bereaved constituent. The shoulder clasp for the successful job-seeker. He was asked a medium-tricky question about a teenager driven to suicide by bolshy staff at the local dole office. ‘Clearly human beings in any organisation,’ waffled Lidington, ‘make decisions and … get things wrong.’
Theresa May will be quietly pleased. Her understudy’s steady-eddy performance poses no long-term threat to her. Thornberry is a different matter. Her nerveless probing of Lidington raises her to the position of heiress-apparent if anything happens to Corbyn. Not that he’s likely to fall under a train any time soon. They’re all on strike.
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