Jeremy Corbyn has a stubborn streak. Critics might call him a slow learner. But even he can recognise when he’s on to a winning streak. After months – years – of rambling on about something sent in by Susan of Solihull that goes on for so long no one can remember quite what his original point was, the Labour leader has twigged that prime minister’s questions isn’t really that complicated. Especially when you’re up against someone as hopeless as Theresa May.
Last week, Corbyn broke with the habit of a lifetime by asking six short questions about Brexit and had the best PMQs of his time as leader. So quite understandably, he opted for doing the same thing this week. With precisely the same result. At this rate Wednesdays could become a cushy number for the Labour leader. Why bother to spend hours mugging up on the NHS or Windrush, when all you need to do is casually inquire how the prime minister thinks Brexit is coming along and then sit back and wait for everyone to start sniggering.
“How is Brexit coming along?” Corbyn asked. Theresa was completely blindsided by this. As if she had never heard of Brexit, let alone had a solution to it. Her mouth opened and shut as she waited for her voice to synch with her lips. Umm, Brexit, she said, stalling for time as she willed an electrical charge to fire up her circuit board.
It had all been going so well that she had divided the cabinet subcommittee into two sub-subcommittees. One sub-subcommittee had said that everything was going splendidly because the solution they were working on was a complete waste of time. And the second sub-subcommittee that had been working on the other solution had reported that they, too, thought things couldn’t be better because their option was a total non-starter.
To make things even clearer, the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, had spent the morning telling the select committee that both solutions were equally workable. As in equally unworkable. Theresa was now minded to further divide the two sub-subcommittees into three sub-sub-subcommittees.
Corbyn then further confused the prime minister by asking her epistemological questions on the nature of friction. How much friction was as little friction as possible? “The government has a policy,” the prime minister creaked, defaulting to her normal Maybot mode. A policy of having done almost nothing for two years. A policy of literally not having a clue.
Alongside the prime minister on the government frontbench, there were collective groans of despair. The closest the cabinet has come to a show of unity in months. Even Matt Hancock, who has never knowingly met a bum he doesn’t feel compelled to lick, threw his head back in a state of tortured rictus. Shares in the heroin trade rose sharply. At times like these, only oblivion will do.
The Maybot stumbled on. An incoherent death spiral of free association. The Art of Mindlessnessnessness. Failing to answer even the easiest questions. Failing even to realise that she had inadvertently committed the UK to remaining in the customs union. The ghost of Freud. It was terrifying to realise that someone whose job description is to speak and think is often incapable of doing either.
Corbyn merely stuck to his formula. Keep it simple, stupid. It didn’t really matter that his own party’s position is inconsistent with the realities of Brexit. Labour doesn’t have to come up with any intelligent ideas of its own. It merely has to point out the stupidity of the government’s. AKA shooting fish in a barrel. The hunt for the cabinet’s solitary brain cell continues.
There was some light relief when the Tory MP, Owen Paterson, who is just out of hospital after falling off a horse, intervened. What Paterson had learned from his mishap was that the horse had been a remainer saboteur and that everyone in the hospital in which he had been treated had come round to thinking Brexit was a good idea when threatened with deportation. His injuries may have been more severe than first thought. The Maybot smiled gratefully. It was always nice to know there was someone more delusional than her.