On Monday morning, Justine Greening was a member of the Cabinet. On Monday night, she was given the heave-ho. On Wednesday, she sat on the backbenches in the top corner of the Chamber, surrounded by pro-EU Tory rebel plotters who have made that part of the House their area.
How they treated her like a princess! Pats on the arm. Solicitous expressions. Sad smiles and doleful nods of the head as they attempted to feel her pain.
We love you, Justine! We want you! I should perhaps clarify that second one. ‘We want you to join our little group and help try to block Brexit and thus topple your new enemy, Mrs May,’ might be more accurate. Miss Greening (Putney), a Yorkshirewoman, was once thought solidly Eurosceptic. She was certainly content to let that impression spread.
Justine Greening was relegated to ‘Remainer Corner’ alongside Nicky Morgan, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve as Theresa May took on Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs on Wednesday
Justine Greening (left) spent the first Prime Minister’s Questions of 2018 nustling up to that bespectacled Che Guevara of Tory Remoaners, Dominic Grieve (right)
Mr Cameron and George Osborne would not have taken kindly to Miss Greening supporting Leave
I had a cuppa with her at the Tory Party conference in October 2015 and she was sphinx-like when I asked how she would vote in the EU referendum.
Even as late as December 2015, when she was in David Cameron’s Cabinet, she was described by The Guardian newspaper as a probable Brexiteer. In the event she supported ‘In’, arguing that ‘for me, it boils down to opportunity and influence’.
For her, that may well have been true. Mr Cameron and George Osborne would not have taken kindly to Miss Greening supporting Leave.
I may be doing her a disservice. She may have supported Remain simply on the principles of the argument. But it helped Messrs Cameron and Osborne that she – youthful, urban, zippy, with minorities reach – decided to back their side.
When Theresa May became PM, Miss Greening (who had been one of the May candidacy’s two proposers) was promoted. She found it possible to adapt her views and support ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Loyalist that we must presume she was, she was no doubt as infuriated as the rest of the Government when Tory rebels such as Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) and Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) helped to defeat Mrs May in a Commons vote at the end of last year.
Miss Greening (Putney), a Yorkshirewoman, was once thought solidly Eurosceptic
But that was then and this is now. Mrs May’s people stupidly put it about that Theresa thought Justine a bore, and they have made an enemy of her. So it was that Miss Greening settled her fragile bones where she did in the Chamber yesterday, and that she spent the first Prime Minister’s Questions of 2018 nustling up to that bespectacled Che Guevara of Tory Remoaners, Monsieur Grieve.
Le Grieve! You should see, these days, how this once nerdish Herbert stretches his limbs and splays wide his groin. He was taking up two seats by the end. Quite the buck, he has become.
As he listened to Jeremy Corbyn attack Mrs May’s health policies, a smile colonised his face. From time to time he turned to Miss Greening and vouchsafed some drollery, perhaps in French, in which he is fluent. By the end he had her smiling.
Layla Moran was unable to raise a health question in parliament
It is hard to believe that Miss Greening – who is, as I say, a Yorkshirewoman – could find it in her soul ever to be quite so devoted to the European project as M. Grieve, who belongs to France’s Legion d’Honneur; but imagine the satisfaction to be had, the visceral revenge, were she so to assist the Grieve tendency that it managed to torpedo our nation’s independence from the European Empire.
PMQs itself? Over-long. Mrs May and Mr Corbyn spent 20 minutes on their exchanges. The most informative moment perhaps came when Mrs May entered the Chamber and there was a cool lack of enthusiasm on the Tory benches.
In points of order, Layla Moran (Lib Dem, Oxford W & Abingdon) complained that she had not been able to raise some health problem in her constituency. Speaker Bercow said she had herself to blame. He was going to call her but she failed to stand, and thus signify her desire to speak. Oxford surely deserves a slightly brighter MP.