Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Why can’t Ian Blackford admit the truth about a no-deal Brexit?

It’s all over, folks. This is absolutely the last time you’ll ever see Theresa May live in concert. Until the next time. May has become a bankrupt rock-star taking her tired old hits out on the road yet again. This week’s futile tour includes Belfast, Dublin and Brussels. Futile because the EU won’t grant any concessions until the dying hours of March 29th. So the PM might as well enjoy the scenery, the food and the wine if there’s any left after Jean-Claude Juncker has been served.

Meanwhile a muted house met in her absence. The increasingly bizarre speaker, John Bercow, introduced May’s replacement, David Lidington, with the following:

‘The Rt Hon gentleman is a notable celebrity not only in Aylesbury but here in this house’.

The Speaker has always enjoyed awarding marks to MPs for their intellectual and forensic powers. But his interest in stardom is new. He repeated the formula when he called Emily Thornberry, standing in for Jeremy Corbyn:

‘The Right Hon.

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