Outgoing premier gives typically bombastic valedictory sermon as MPs pack the Commons to see his dying moments at the despatch box
Source -'Daily Telegraph 20/07/22
It was political judgment day for the Prime Minister – and the verdicts ranged from very good to appalling. Perhaps the most damning assessment surfaced on a couple of billboards that some of the wackier protest groups were waving up and down Whitehall on this stifling July morning. “BORIS knew Hydroxychloroquine is a cure for Covid,” one cried. “Arrest Boris for TREASON AND GENOCIDE,” read another.
Things were looking somewhat rosier indoors. As Bozza entered the Chamber for his valedictory PMQs, his backbenchers – the toads – erupted into a deafening cheer. “Yeaaaaaah,” they bleated, Judas-like, as if the last few weeks of ferocious backstabbing had been a mere scratch. You almost expected the ringleaders to plant an unconvincing kiss on his cheek.
Perhaps they felt a pang of guilt, or an assassin’s remorse, because they laughed uproariously at every one of the Prime Minister's jokes, shushing and jeering his critics. For one hour only, the co-conspirators had reformed as an elite Praetorian Guard.
Disgraced MP Rob Roberts – once a Tory, now an Independent – was there, sprawling on the Conservative side, a ghost at the feast – the perfect fusion of Mr Blobby and Banquo. This was, however, a rather fleshier haunting than that suffered by Macbeth. Although the benches were packed, the Tory MPs kept their distance, as if in the vicinity of something noisome.
Kim Leadbeater, of Batley and Spen, had been given the first question and instantly launched into a boorish, squawking lecture about standards in public life. On and on she prattled, like a parliamentary version of Prince Harry, until eventually silenced by the jeering of the Tory Party’s newly-loyal footsoldiers.
Sir Keir Starmer treated the Commons to his typically agonising attempts to be funny. His adenoidal delivery cued up his jokes with the slow thud of an approaching infantry battalion and all the subtlety of a heat-seeking missile. He compared the Tory leadership race to “EastEnders” - no doubt the result of some focus group suggesting this was the swing voters’ favoured choice of soap - and he managed to fluff this too.
Boris bit back with a few trademark Johnsonisms – Starmer was “one of those pointless plastic bollards you might find around an abandoned roadworks on a motorway”. As another departing PM once put it, he was enjoying this.
The SNP took Labour's mealy-mouthed unpleasantness to still greater heights. Ian Blackford thanked the Prime Minister for “driving support for independence”, while John Nicolson, typically graceless, asked whether the PM will "surpass Harold Wilson with a lavender list of dodgy donors". “We will have the referendum!” screeched Kirsten Oswald.
"I’m sure the whole house is looking forward to the Prime Minister finishing his book on Shakespeare,” quipped Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, exhibiting something of Starmer's gift for one-liners. The Commons groaned. Boris compared him to Polonius.
In his dying moments at the despatch box, the PM launched into a valedictory sermon to his backbenchers, worthy of Polonius himself. “Deregulate and cut taxes,” he cried. Well, better late than never. He muttered an oblique, Ides of March warning about the Treasury hampering investment and growth. “Above all,” he finished (to thine own self be true?), “it’s not Twitter that counts.”
The PM’s final words from the despatch box as Prime Minister? “Hasta la vista, baby!” And with that the Tories stood up and began clapping wildly. Theresa May grudgingly rose to her feet, but kept her arms resolutely pinned to her side. The opposition MPs refused to join in the standing ovation at all.
So hasta la vista, Boris. But was this really the end, or perhaps, like the Terminator, merely a sign that he’d be back?
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