This time last week, the last thing Theresa May really fancied was a trade mission to India. All that travel, all those meetings spent not discussing Tata steel and coming to speculative decisions that would be entirely dependent on Britain’s not-yet-started Brexit negotiations. But after the embarrassment of last Thursday’s high court ruling that the government couldn’t invoke article 50 by royal prerogative, India looked a much __more attractive destination. Let someone else take the flak.
With the justice minister, Liz Truss, having gone to ground after taking rather too long to realise that part of her job was to actually defend the independence of the judiciary – who would have guessed? – that person was the Brexit minister. As this was the third time in almost as many weeks that David Davis has been made to come to the house to try and fail to persuade MPs that the government really did know what it was doing, it was understandable that Grumpy was at his grumpiest.
“We want to bring back control of our laws to the UK,” he growled. Except for those ones which we don’t trust British judges to adjudicate on in the way we would like them to. Sovereignty has its limits apparently. “The government came to the conclusion that it was perfectly OK to invoke article 50 using prerogative powers,” he continued. Kindness prevented him from commenting on whether May had made a misjudgment of her own in appointing Jeremy Wright – a man described by former Tory MP, Stephen Phillips, as “a third-rate conveyancing lawyer” – as attorney general. “The court came to a different view and we are disappointed by that.”
Disappointment was the least of it. Fury, outrage and humiliation were __more like it. But Grumpy was in no mood to back down. Having repeatedly told MPs that the result of the referendum must stand and there should be no going back, Grumpy sounded awfully like someone who was having a major sulk about not getting his way and was going to carry on fighting until he did. “We’re going to the supreme court, who we believe will tell us we are being proper and lawful,” he insisted. And if the supreme court let him down, he’d go to the supreme supreme court. And if that failed he’d just appoint some judges of his own. Job done.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit minister, took a more measured tone. He’s in for the long haul and his doctor has told him to watch his blood pressure. “This is the third statement you’ve made and we are still none the wiser,” he observed. Grumpy had failed to condemn the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph for their attacks on the judges; he had failed to explain the government’s contingency plan in the event of it losing its appeal; he had failed, end of.
There was no way Grumpy was going to condemn the press – it’s always easier to overlook a bit of homophobia and racism when they’re coming from your own supporters, so he went back to his default setting. Anyone who tried to stop the government from doing exactly what it wanted was trying to thwart the will of the people and was therefore an enemy of the state. There could be no question of the government revealing its negotiating strategy – not least because it doesn’t have one – as it would undermine its already ropey position. The idea that the government has already given away a key bargaining position by declaring it will invoke article 50 before the end of March, doesn’t seem to have occurred to Grumpy.
MPs from both sides of the house invited the government to put forward a resolution to invoke article 50, in order to allow the house to prove its concerns on this issue were over parliamentary sovereignty and not to delay Britain’s exit from the EU. “No,” snapped Grumpy. “We’re going to go to the supreme court and that’s that.” Giving parliament any say in Brexit would be the thin end of the wedge. Give MPs an inch and they’ll take a mile.
Could Grumpy give any hint of what transitional arrangements might be made if, as everyone expects, the EU negotiations cannot be concluded within two years? No, he bloody well couldn’t. They were a secret which was his. The more reasonable the request, the grumpier Grumpy became. By the time the speaker concluded the session, a fuse had blown and Grumpy had become almost entirely monosyllabic. Yes and no. He wasn’t entirely sure which. But one of the two. Definitely, maybe.