Theresa May reveals her plan to bring Chequers back from the dead

Golden sunshine streamed across Westminster at noon. And Jeremy Corbyn wiped away the cheer as soon as he stood up at PMQs. Performing his sad-sack routine, he grouched his way through six questions about ‘painful austerity’. Theresa May wants Scrooge replaced by Lady Bountiful in the corridors of Whitehall. But it hasn’t happened, grumbled the Labour leader. Crime, poverty and mental illness are soaring. May hit back with a barrage of statistics. Britain’s lucky citizenry is awash with cash, she said. Billions here, billions there. More for cops, teachers, hospitals, mental health. The figures gushed like an exploded water-main. ‘200 billion pounds’, she flannelled vaguely, had been made available ‘between 2015 and 2020’, (neglecting to add that most of that period has already elapsed.) She mentioned an additional £1.3m for councils and that ‘extra money for social care’ had been announced at the Tory conference. Local authorities, she went on, would enjoy ‘access to £9.6bn