Blistering Boris blows hopeless Corbyn out of the water

After the drama and excitement of Supreme Court judgment day, the forced return of the Commons was always going to prove something of an anti-climax. MPs who had complained about being “silenced” returned to say… what? The fundamental facts haven’t changed. The Commons won’t do Brexit. It wants to cancel Brexit but won’t vote for that, yet. It calls for the Prime Minister to go but will not trigger a general election to remove him.

For much of today – the first day since the scrapping of prorogation – the place was thinly attended. Half way through Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s statement on Iran there were wide open spaces on the green benches.

Westminster – the chamber itself and the areas for milling about in search of gossip – felt listless. When Attorney General Geoffrey “available for voiceovers and audiobook work” Cox lambasted this “dead parliament” it captured perfectly the sense of ennui marinated in despair.

Just call an election. If the forces of Brexit produce a majority, get on with it. If they don’t, then everyone knows, the Brexiteers promising an almighty public backlash will have lost, and Remain can plot a course, whatever that is. But just dissolve this rotten parliament and go to the country, see what happens and deal with it.

The main event of the day was, of course, a  statement in the evening from the Prime Minister in the wake of his humiliating defeat at the hands of the judges.

Yet even in the face of disaster, his strategy assailed on all sides, scandal piling up at his door, it is quite extraordinary that he looks, and clearly is, completely unfazed. Good grief, he’s enjoying it. Is he quite well? Most people – most politicians – would have the decency to look nervous or cagey after landing themselves in this much of a pickle. Not a bit of it. Johnson is having the time of his life.

Tory MPs, many presumably worried by the high risk Number 10 strategy of using the Just William novels as an instruction manual for government, were muted to begin with listening to their leader. Johnson’s bluster built and built to a crescendo. It was a pyramid of piffle at times but exceptionally punchy all the same.

The leader of the opposition then produced a response that is one of the worst I have ever heard in Parliament.

In his reply Johnson flattened Jeremy Corbyn, mocking him relentlessly and spinning out attack line after attack line in such a manner that the Tory benches came to the life. Hold on – you could see them thinking – this is utter baloney, but it’s electorally potent baloney. At the end – giving a figurative two fingers to Speaker Bercow – Tory MPs broke into thundering applause. Clapping is against the rules in the chamber, but Bercow permits it when it is directed at praising himself or a politically correct point. The rules are out the window. The Tories clapped like mad and roared.

For those appalled by Boris – by his fast and loose behaviour, and his bluster in the face of serious allegations – this all misses the essential moral and ethical point. Boris is getting away with it and Corbyn by virtue of his ineptitude is allowing it.

The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford tackled Johnson on the substance by getting into the meat of the Supreme Court judgment.

By that point much of the press gallery had cleared and Johnson was deemed to have pulled off a great escape routine.

“From Boris that was,” said a veteran Commons observer not well-disposed to the Tories, “one of the most remarkable and powerful performances I have seen for many years.”

How will it look beyond Westminster? The truth – I fear – is that our politics is now so bitterly divided and radicalized that the individual responses, of those who tune in, will be driven by tribal loyalty. Brexit is Britain’s Dreyfus case. How you respond to any development or plot-twist depends on where you stand on the core question.

If you cheer on Supreme Court judges and want a second referendum or revoke, then you probably see Johnson’s Commons showmanship as the desperate antics of a populist scoundrel.

If you voted for Brexit and swear at the television when you see Remainer former Tory MP Dominic Grieve, then Boris hitting sixes over the pavilion, even if his style if unorthodox, is the most cheering sight you’ve had for weeks. They are Boris’s people – Brexity people – and if he cheers up enough of them he wins a general election. If he doesn’t he’s had it.

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