On steams Mrs May, from trough to crest of whitest wave. Intermittently over the gale you hear her propeller grind and you sense life below decks must be pretty bilious. After you with those Kwells, Popeye.
The Prime Minister has proved resilient. Even her foes admit this. Somehow the rusty bucket has not capsized and there is now a possibility of calmer waters.
The one problem is that few onlookers are entirely sure of the direction in which she is steaming.
Would-be supporters think she is going to do right by them but a small part of them remains uneasy because her despatch-box answers are always so procedural.
Theresa May was resilient in the Commons as she took questions following her post-summit update
Her opponents think she is doing dreadful deeds but something makes them hold back from total condemnation because they see there may still be a chance she will lean to their view. The caution of her replies always leave that inch of room for manoeuvre.
Yesterday she came to the Commons to give one of her post-summit updates. More than 75 asked her questions – midges hurling themselves at a car windscreen. None made much impact.
All she really did was leave the House with the broad impression that she was persevering, ‘getting on with the job’, making headway – or whatever other expression you like to use for a state of jaw-clenching continuity. At times it was as painful as watching Paula Radcliffe run the last few yards of a marathon.
Brexit Secretary David Davis listens as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responds to May’s statement on last week’s European Council meeting
Labour MPs kept asking if she intended to dump EU working-time rules once we are out of the European Empire.
Rather than say ‘no’, she repeatedly gave an answer that effectively said that without quite saying that. It drove the House nuts. I think she actually enjoyed that.
She said EU employment rules were going to be swallowed into British law, so Labour MPs need not worry. Why not just say ‘no’ to their question ‘are you going to scrap those EU working-time rules’, then?
More from Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail…
Well, because: a) that would be technically imprecise, as they will become British and not EU rules; b) it would be a readily-understood soundbite and the politician in her is wary of such things.
Likewise, she was asked a question by Tory backbencher Richard Drax (the Speaker, taking the rise, called him by his full name Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, which could almost be a railway halt in Flanders). Would she confirm, asked Drax politely, that in March 2019 we will leave the EU ‘in its entirety’. Mrs May could have said ‘yup!’ But she did not.
Although she began and ended her reply by saying we would indeed be leaving the EU then, she added several clauses which explained the ‘implementation period’ and how it would give us time to set in place the ‘practical changes’ needed for our new immigration rules.
Any lay person would have listened to all those words and thought ‘hmmmn, why didn’t she just say “yes”?’.
It is probably nothing more sinister than a lifelong addiction to verbosity.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responds after Prime Minister Theresa May made her statement to MPs
Two other things to report. First, Mrs May spoke about the intemperance of political debate, some MPs complaining about newspapers being too critical of them. It was marvellous to watch the fury with which Labour MPs reacted when the PM said some Tories had been insulted by the Left. Two women on the Labour front bench, Margaret Greenwood and Marsha de Cordova, screamed abuse at Mrs May as she was saying this. Hypocrisy in a dancing tonsil!
The second moment of note came when Nigel Evans (Con, Ribble Valley) was stopped halfway through a question by Speaker Bercow, who ruled that the query was out of order.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson leaving Downing Street following a Brexit Cabinet meeting
It might have been an idea for him at least to let Mr Evans finish what he was saying. Mr Evans responded by saying Mr Bercow was ‘absolutely ridiculous’.
This ignited a Bercow tantrum. ‘Don’t shake your head at me!’ yelled Bercow, going quite scarlet round the gills.
You wouldn’t get a sketchwriter behaving like that.