The PM is in the middle-east on her ‘strong and stable leadership’ tour. Replacing her at PMQs stood Damian Green, a hesitant, avuncular figure who seems ill-suited to front-line politics. He’s uncomfortably tall, and he dips his chin as he speaks to make his troubled, slender jowls less conspicuous. His hair has quit the fray and left a dignified grassless dome as its memorial. His demeanour is all antiquarian gentleness. He might be the head of parchments at a museum of medical history. How he reached the cabinet is a mystery.
His opponent, Emily Thornberry, is a resourceful court-room performer who started the session by getting the jury (that is, us,) on her side with a few self-deprecating jokes. She welcomed the Harry/Meghan alliance which she compared to Trump’s hand-clinch with Theresa May at the White House last year:
‘This is one Anglo-American couple that we, on this side, will be delighted to see joining hands’
She added a dig at herself, anticipating England’s appearance at the rugby league cup final:
‘I, for one, will be waving my St George’s flag’
Then to business.
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