What we know for sure about our secretive new PM is that she uses her clothes as a bush-telegraph. What did the tom-toms tell us? Mrs May was done up like an Evesham house-wife going to dinner with her husband’s boss in about 1950. Neat hair. Navy blue jacket. White top underneath. A rope of fake pearls and just a hint of neck. Across the shires the faithful will have cheered this display of Brief Encounter elegance. She was good at the despatch box, nervous certainly, sometimes stumbling over her words. But she produced a forceful impression of competence and compassion. Hard head. Soft heart. She has ‘grip’ as they say. Terrifying for Labour.
She should work on her gags by not working on her gags. Her strain of humour is so dry it can seem effortful. Haughty even. When Corbyn brought up short-term contracts May responded with a set-piece from this morning’s script conference. She recited a paragraph of ironic accusation likening Corbyn to an unscrupulous boss who ignores the work-force and ‘exploits the rules to further his own career.’ For the pay-off, she craned forwards and lowered her powdered face towards her opponent. ‘Remind him of anyone?’ Rather a leaden punch-line. Her factual quips worked better. ‘It took them three weeks to decide who was the unity candidate,’ she said of Labour. ‘The Conservatives came up with an all-woman shortlist when we weren’t required to.’
Corbyn seemed to echo May’s post-war look. He was sporting beige tweeds and a boring shirt. His tie ‘of deepest red’ wasn’t done up properly to assert his revolutionary credentials. Sad Corbo has an air of abandonment and affronted dignity that prevents him from stamping his authority on the commons. If you didn’t know he was the opposition leader you’d think he was a penniless vegan in the dock for liberating beagles from a testing clinic. He needs help formulating a strategy for PMQs but he doesn’t know that he needs help. So he’ll never get it. He asked all his questions in isolation, never linking one point to its predecessor, never attempting to mount a sustained assault.
He was miffed that rising property values since the 1990s have left youngsters unable to buy. Mrs May flashed him her chilliest smile and pointed out that the asset boom was a product of new Labour. An easy hit. Corbyn in the frame for Blairism. He called for an end to austerity and got another broadside from the Mayflower. ‘He talks about austerity. I call it living within one’s means .. .. it’s about not saddling our children and grandchildren with debt.’
One of Corbyn’s pet projects is to re-run the miner’s strike. But as a state-funded casino. Instead of cops and colliers tussling over pits we’ll have lawyers and plaintiffs bidding for lolly. He asked Mrs May to start a fresh public enquiry into Orgreave – a fatality-free brawl between police and miners which celebrates its 32nd anniversary this year – whose fading memory belongs to a museum not to an unending scrabble for ‘compensation’.
Some say Corbyn is lost in the past but the real problem is that it’s the only place he feels secure.
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