‘So… was that a yes or a no?’ A number of MPs on the Liaison Committee asked the Prime Minister that question during her evidence question today. They weren’t doing it to make a point: Theresa May spent most of the hour and a half stubbornly answering a set of questions that she had clearly decided in advance with lines also decided in advance, regardless of whether those questions were very close at all to the ones being asked in the Committee room.
She was most opaque on the question of whether Parliament will get a vote on Brexit, circling around the issue by listing the opportunities for MPs to discuss Brexit. None of these involved a vote, but as the Prime Minister mentioned the debates, statements and votes on the Great Repeal Bill that were being provided, she did so with a tone of frustration as though she couldn’t quite believe that Parliament was annoyed it wasn’t being given a vote when she was giving it lots of other things instead. The smart bet, of course, would be that Parliament won’t get a vote – why else would the Prime Minister dodge the question three times?
It wasn’t just on the vote that the Prime Minister tried to be as oblique as possible. During a rather terse exchange with Yvette Cooper over the net migration target, May managed both to say that she remained committed to the target and also to avoid giving a figure for how low she wanted to drive migration. It was almost as if she was trying to avoid providing any quote herself which could be used against her if she too failed to meet the ‘tens of thousands’ that David Cameron’s government had promised – and missed – while also trying to avoid a story about her explicitly dropping the target, to which she was very personally committed when Home Secretary.
We were promised that we would get more details on the Prime Minister’s vision for Brexit in the New Year. But based on today’s performance, the speech that May says she will give early in the new political term will only answer the questions she has asked herself, not the ones the heads of select committees were trying to ask today.
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