Just before 5.30pm she strode through the double-doors upstairs at No 10 and insisted, with dramatic severity, that she was going nowhere.
Black jacket, dark glowers, a wintry tone as she claimed she was not interested in her personal prospects. She was acting in ‘the national interest’ and that was why her deal must be choked down by party and Parliament (and you lot, the people).
The optics were good: Union Jacks, a lion and unicorn crest, polished wood and a prime minister visibly summoning her every ounce of statesmanship to maintain a façade of calm.
‘Am I going to see this through? Yes!’ she said. Yet it was hard to square all this with the clattering cacophony of the preceding ten hours.
Just before 5.30pm she strode through the double-doors upstairs at No 10 and insisted, with dramatic severity, that she was going nowhere
Her stoicism, or stubbornness, was amazing (and she even found the strength to laugh). But at what point does it all become self-delusion? At what point does determination become dogmatic?
It had been another of those mad, exhausting, somehow exhilarating days of Westminster crisis, when every text alert seemed likely to signify a ministerial resignation. Another matelot overboard!
With each shuddering blow, each splosh as another departee was no longer able to swallow Mrs May’s Brexit ‘capitulation’, you sensed sea-water seeping through the caulk of a sinking ship of state.
Of Mrs May’s physical stamina there was no doubt. She stood in the Commons for three hours of questions. At times it felt like 649 MPs versus one, for she received pitifully little support for her deal. Apart from a few vocal wobbles, perhaps as much from tiredness as emotion, she managed not to collapse into a sobbing heap.
On TV’s Top Gear they once tried to destroy a Toyota pick-up truck and subjected it to all sorts of ordeals, setting it on fire, submerging it, dropping it from a skyscraper. Each time its engine coughed back into life. Same yesterday with our seemingly indestructible PM: Toyota May. Yet she sustained terrible damage and you had to wonder if she was deep in some mental tunnel to stick so mechanically to a hated policy.
She can not have had much sleep, her eyes now those of a lemur, the shoulders sloped. An hour before she was due in the Commons at 10.30am it was announced that Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab had resigned. A serious, proper figure, Raab. There was no dismissing him as a mere trouble-maker. Warp factor five, Mr Sulu.
Raab’s departure showed, again, the madness of Mrs May putting officials in charge of the negotiations and making them senior to elected politicians. We are seeing here a colossal tussle for survival by the technocracy.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset), with deadly politeness, noted that despite her long claims to be fighting for our sovereignty, her proposed deal now ‘says otherwise’
At 10.20am a flashing motorcade whisked her from No 10 to Parliament in less than a minute. I hared downstairs to the Commons Chamber and got there in time to see her enter. She was short of puff and her fringe was windblown. Around her, ministers treated her with care-home kindness.
The Treasury’s Mel Stride shot her an encouraging wink. Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright tried to reassure her with a light-hearted remark. He was rewarded with a weak sort of smile.
The danger in the Commons came not from Jeremy Corbyn (hopeless) but from her own side. Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset), with deadly politeness, noted that despite her long claims to be fighting for our sovereignty, her proposed deal now ‘says otherwise’.
Should he write a letter demanding her resignation? Mrs May gave a long, controlled answer but Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe) went loopy. ‘You are a DISGRACE!’ she howled. Mr Rees-Mogg lightly touched the frame of his spectacles.
Mrs May’s answers were their usual seamless spiel, repeating formulae like a machine, but they lacked the shimmering force of Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s leader at Westminster. Nothing matches an angry Ulsterman for Biblical fury. Mrs May had reneged on private promises, he thundered.
She was offering the country ‘subjection to the rules and laws of others who may not have our interests at heart’.
Mrs May hoped that she and Mr Dodds would continue to have private meetings. Watching all this, one felt almost intrusive. It was all so personal, so passive-aggressive. Family row in a restaurant.
The optics were good: Union Jacks, a lion and unicorn crest, polished wood and a prime minister visibly summoning her every ounce of statesmanship to maintain a façade of calm
Sir Nicholas Soames (Con, Mid-Sussex) kept barking at Mrs May’s critics like a dyspeptic terrier. When Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh & Wickford) pleaded with Mrs May to ‘accept the political reality’ and accept that her deal was a goner, Sir Nicholas started exploding. ‘What a twerp! Sit down! T**t!’
It was the same with Andrew Bridgen (Con, NW Leics) said it was ‘now in the national interest for her to leave, perhaps following a short transition period’.
Sir Nicholas spat out various ruderies, his purple-socked, sneakered left heel swinging so fast on its moorings, it could have whisked a decent gin flip at the Savoy’s American Bar.
One of the morning’s resigners, Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara, was standing near the double doors. Other MPs patted him on the back and shook his hand – among them Tory deputy chairman James Cleverly.
Word broke that Mr Rees-Mogg was going to hold a Press-call outside Parliament’s St Stephen’s entrance to confirm that he had written a letter seeking Mrs May’s removal. We sketchwriters rushed there to find a great throng including pro-EU protesters, TV cameras and armed police officers. Yet more chaos.
Mr Rees-Mogg emerged, courtly as ever, the double-breasted buccaneer, to explain that he was not engaged on some coup attempt but was just following proper constitutional procedures to try to ensure that the people’s will on Brexit was honoured. Let it be noted, by the way, that Boris Johnson yesterday kept his powder dry and declined to say anything in the Commons.
As I walked away from the Rees-Mogg scrum I bumped into Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan, a Europhile.
I have known Alan for years and he is normally able to see the human comedy in even the most challenging moments. But yesterday his eyes were clouded, a yellow film of anger. Whatever happens to Mrs May, unity in the parliamentary Tory party has had it, possibly for years.