SNP throws hissy fit
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Extraordinary scenes in the Commons today as all the SNP members of the House staged a mass walkout. Ostensibly, it happened because the Scottish devolution settlement had not really been addressed in the withdrawal bill debates, says the SNP.
I’m sure that there are questions over changes to the devolution settlement but those concerns are exaggerated by the general Westminster faff on Brexit (No white paper, no clarity on customs, no sense of purpose). It’s also hard to read it out of context with the Nat hokum (Iain’s phrase of course) that the SNP have stirred up over Brexit, attempting to engineer it as an excuse to hold another referendum over the state of the Union.
Well good luck with that. With Brexit, parliament is trying to unravel 50 years of legislative enmeshment – try doing it with three hundred years of shared history, endeavour and solidarity.
Anyway, that’s far too much space devoted to the SNP. Today was an easy win for Corbyn at PMQs. It’s easy to score when the opposition has decided to up sticks and indulge in some serious navel gazing in the best traditions of the Tory party, but he actually started off with a genuinely amusing jibe: “When the Prime Minister met President Donald Trump last week, did she do as the Foreign Secretary suggested and ask him to take over the Brexit negotiations?”
Boris smirked his dishonourable school boy smirk. Corbyn launched into some good questions about the lack of clarity over the backstop and the whereabouts of the long-awaited Brexit white paper. May went full Maybot, delivering her answers in an unconvincing rat-a-tat staccato, at one point assuring the House that a “future new customs arrangement” was very much in the works, that will clearly be defined by both its imminent inevitability and its total novelty. At this, David Davis’ eyes flickered up to the ceiling in a sort of glazed reverie.
She ended with the classic refocus on the culture war, drawing a dividing line between radical Labour and pragmatic Conservatism: “If he wants to talk about differences of opinion, I tell him what division really is. Division is members of the Labour party circulating instruction manuals on how to deselect all the Labour MPs sitting behind him.” She contrasted government success in raising employment with Corbyn’s attempts to “organise a music festival”. She added: “The headline act is the Shadow Chancellor and the Magic Numbers. Just about sums them up.”
Those are good lines, but the government is hardly a model of stability at the moment. It emerged this afternoon that arch Remainers are not yet satisfied that Theresa May’s ‘personal assurances’ on a ‘meaningful vote’ for Parliament are that, well, meaningful. Anna Soubry repeated her calls for May to adopt the Grieve amendment in full, which would represent a major climb down for the government.
There is serious trouble brewing on the continent over the migration crisis. In the wake of a public spat between France’s President Macron, Spain and Italy over the new Five Star-League Coalition’s treatment of migrants, the Austrian government has joined Italy in calling for a more robust approach to illegal migration. Chancellor Merkel is firm on her commitment to a more open approach to asylum, but hardliners in the German government are now in open disagreement with the Merkel orthodoxy on this. It’s a welcome reminder to the UK that Brexit is but one of Europe’s problems, and by no means the most totemic or significant.
Alastair Benn
News and Features editor, Reaction