His mood is cheery, his gait still springy. For all the responsibilities that weigh on those hunched shoulders, his face glows with mischievous bonhomie. Clearly, Boris Johnson is enjoying being Prime Minister.
Watching him with his frontbench colleagues in the Commons, laughing and joking and elbowing them playfully in the ribs, he’s determined to squeeze every last drop of pleasure from his political honeymoon until the delirium subsides.
Take his statement yesterday confirming the go-ahead for HS2.
With a number of his senior backbenchers still wobbly on the idea, this was a duty he might well have hived off to his thick-skinned Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
His mood is cheery, his gait still springy. For all the responsibilities that weigh on those hunched shoulders, his face glows with mischievous bonhomie. Clearly, Boris Johnson is enjoying being Prime Minister
Instead the PM grasped the moment with the enthusiasm of a terrier who’s just been bunged his bedtime Bonio. Standing before the House, Boris announced a national ‘transport revolution’ which, on top of HS2, would include a £5billion investment in buses and bike lanes.
The language as ever was as ornate as Pugin wallpaper. He promised we would see ‘mini-Hollands blooming like so many tulips in towns’ where children would ‘bicycle safely and happily to school and work in tree-dappled sunlight’.
He spoke of the need to fix the ‘musculoskeletal problem’ of UK transport: ‘Yes, we must fix the joint between the knee bone and the thigh bone and the shin bone and the ankle bone. Yes, we must fix the arthritis in the fingers and the toes, but we also have to fix the spine.’
HS2 is no easy sell but the PM was pushing it harder than a market tradesman flogging suspect bottles of Chanel No 5.
With a number of his senior backbenchers still wobbly on the idea, this was a duty he might well have hived off to his thick-skinned Transport Secretary Grant Shapps
‘This is not just about getting from London to Birmingham and back,’ he bellowed, delivering a meaty backhander to the dispatch box.
‘This is about finally making a rapid connection from the West Midlands to Liverpool’ – smack! ‘To Manchester’ – smack! ‘And Leeds’ – smack!
It’s these ‘sunny upland’ speeches where the PM so excels, talking of the future, teasing and daring colleagues to join him. In this form, he really is irresistible.
‘Yes, it is ambitious,’ the PM hollered. ‘But ambition is what we have lacked for far too long.’ The Government benches roared.
Then Jeremy Corbyn rose. Cue awkward coughs. Amid the silence, someone groaned. Corbyn appeared to have a new suit on (or he got his old suit dry-cleaned). He accused the Government of ‘stealing Labour’s ideas’, moaning that when he advocated for more buses last year the media ridiculed him. Yet now it was being hailed as a masterstroke.
Boris grinned at his opponent, throwing an imaginary uppercut.
Then Jeremy Corbyn rose. Cue awkward coughs. Amid the silence, someone groaned. Corbyn appeared to have a new suit on (or he got his old suit dry-cleaned). He accused the Government of ‘stealing Labour’s ideas’, moaning that when he advocated for more buses last year the media ridiculed him. Yet now it was being hailed as a masterstroke
Poor Jezza. It seems to be only just dawning on him that people didn’t want him as Prime Minister.
Behind him the Labour benches looked sullen. Rows of fed-up faces, like those pictures of delayed holidaymakers sprawled across Gatwick Airport’s South Terminal that you see on the news in August.
Ed Miliband (remember him?) despondently stared into space.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford tried to ridicule Boris’s plans to build a bridge to Northern Ireland ‘over the 20-mile expanse of the North Sea’. Oops, he meant Irish Sea, the ninny. ‘I think he might need to check the geography of the United Kingdom,’ Boris chuntered.
The Prime Minister’s main critic from his own benches was Andrew Bridgen (Con, NW Leicestershire) who worried that HS2 would be ‘an albatross hung around the neck of the country’.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford tried to ridicule Boris’s plans to build a bridge to Northern Ireland ‘over the 20-mile expanse of the North Sea’
Boris eloquently pointed out that all big infrastructure projects are loathed during their inception – the M25 and the 2012 London Olympics. But both those have served their purpose.
Quite so. He might have added the Channel Tunnel to that list.
Most surprising objection of the session came from Labour’s Meg Hillier (Hackney S & Shoreditch) who asked of these grands projets: ‘Where is the money going to come from?’ A Labour MP worrying about cost? Well, it was a new one for me, anyway.
The PM said it would be paid for by ‘the hard work and effort of the British people’. Google Translate: By prudent governance, not pie-in-the-sky Labour recklessness.