PMQs: The three amigos join the magnificent seven
As the eleven members of The Independence Group – already dubbed the Tiggers – took their new seats behind the SNP before PMQs got underway, Jeremy Corbyn was looking altogether more Eeyore like, sullen and cranky on the front bench as he and May tussled to no useful end over Brexit.
It felt like any other day in hundred acre wood as the leader of the opposition and the prime minister engaged in a stats-slinging match about Brexit, employment rates and child poverty levels. But parliamentary politics reached new levels of depressing as May and Corbyn used Brexit to bash each other, while both entirely refusing to address their parties which are as good as falling apart.
It’s not exactly newsworthy to point out a lacuna in communication within any of the main parties in Westminster right now, but there is a delicious irony in Corbyn rattling off the achievements of the Blair-era Labour Party to point score against May, as almost simultaneously Momentum’s press secretary used the moniker “Blairite” as the central criticism of the Labour defectors.
Just after PMQs the three Tory defectors – Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollastan and Heidi Allen – gave a press conference explaining their reasons for resigning from the Conservatives. The magnificent seven have now been joined by the three amigos, Heidi Allen said. Possibly not the greatest allusion however, considering the Three Amigos (1986) follows three silent film stars mistakenly believed to be heroes by the suffering inhabitants of a Mexican village. The messaging needs a little work.
Some of the formerly-Labour Tiggers visibly winced as Soubry defended the legacy of austerity and the steps taken by the coalition government of 2010 to 2015. Divided on fundamentals before they’ve even really got going? The Tiggers will fit right in.
The Tiggers now have just enough members to field a football team. And as if these things write themselves, it was none other than Gary Lineker who nailed his colours to the mast, tweeting about the new group: “No idea where this will lead, but for many that are politically homeless this could conceivably be a place of shelter from the increasingly extremist political duopoly.” Put Allen in centre forward, Chuka down the left wing, probably best to keep Angela Smith away from goals however, considering the epic own goal she conceded for the new group just hours after their launch on Monday with her “funny tinge” comments about race on BBC Politics Live.
So, another day and no major progress on Brexit (37 days now, no one panic), but at least we have the makings of a new party, whose viability is completely unknowable and policies currently non-existent.
All a bit of a headache for May as she arrives in Brussels, again attempting to renegotiate the non-negotiable. Perhaps she can take solace in the prescient words of WB Yeats: “Things fall apart; the Centre ground cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the Tories, and the Labour party.” (Is that right?)
Oh, and has anyone checked on the Lib Dems lately?