It was all a bit of a mystery. Just where were the Tories? Had they just got their dates confused? Thought that recess started this week rather than next? Or had they all bunked off to Lord’s to see England beat India in a tight finish? Or maybe some – caught up in the entente amicale aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s state visit – had taken the Eurostar to Paris to enjoy steak frites on Bastille Day?
You’d have thought the Conservative backbenchers would have wanted to be out in force to hear Yvette Cooper’s statement on the new arrangements for dealing with small boats. After all, this is the stuff that Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp live and breathe. The reason they get up in the morning. To wage a two-person war on those making the Channel crossing. So surely Tory MPs would be desperate to have their say. A show of strength. But weirdly there were only five and most of them were to scuttle off long before the end.
When Keir Starmer had announced his new “one in, one out” returns deal with Macron last Thursday, he had sounded slightly too keen. As if he was somehow trying to overcompensate for the fact that he hadn’t landed quite the deal he had hoped. Desperate to talk up that 50 returns a week was a sizeable deterrent to those thinking of making the crossing. Not that he was willing to discuss any numbers. Though 50 was the magic number. The difference between success and failure.
Four days on and the home secretary had no such qualms as she made a statement to the Commons on the new initiative. Everything has been too weak for far too long, she said. It all started in 2018 and had got steadily worse. But everything was going to stop right now. New cooperation. Stronger borders. Great new deal with France. It might not be the best deal going, but it was the first of its kind. Better than the Tories had managed to negotiate after they had spent every year since Brexit slagging off the French.
One Tory who had turned up was Philp, the shadow home secretary. Though by the end he was probably wishing he hadn’t. Because, as the saying goes, he had his arse handed to him on a plate. The Philpster’s tragedy is that he sees himself as one of life’s success stories. While everyone else sees him as rather a sad loser. Someone who will say almost anything to advance his career, failing to perceive the embarrassment he is causing himself. A more able, psychologically healthy person knows when to cut their losses. Understands there are some battles not worth fighting. Chris just crashes and burns.
“The home secretary sounds rather pleased with herself,” the Philpster observed. Pots and kettles. Chris never doesn’t sound pleased with himself. Even when he’s drowning not waving. But in this he was right. A stopped clock and all that. Yvette did sound pleased with herself. But then who wouldn’t, knowing that Philp was your opposite number. He is licensed to fail.
Chris carried on mansplaining. The new returns scheme was just a gimmick. What was really needed was a mass deportation scheme. Just like the massively brilliant Rwanda scheme that was on the verge of emptying every hotel for asylum seekers in the country when Rishi Sunak called the last election.
Truly, the Philpster is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The effortless rise of the dimerati. It’s not at all certain if Chris has yet grasped the link between cause and effect. He concluded by saying that everyone arriving by irregular routes was a potential rapist, before sitting down triumphantly. Forgive him, Lord, for he knows not what he does.
This was the moment for which Cooper had been waiting. The bit which makes her job worthwhile. Yes, she has to suck up endless bad news stories about more and more small-boat crossings but on the plus side she gets to take out her feelings on the Philpster. She tried to give Chris a quick reality check. Who had been the immigration minister when the number of irregular migrants had gone up tenfold. Chris put up his hand. He had.
Who had been the immigration minister who had promised the home affairs select committee that he was very optimistic about getting a returns deal with France in 2020? Again the Philpster’s arm shot up. Who was the immigration minister who had achieved and changed nothing. Up went the arm again. Did he now think it might have been a good idea to have tried treating the French with respect? Now his arm stayed down. You can take a horse to water …
The Philpster’s humiliation wasn’t quite over yet. Next he had to take some incoming from John Glen, one of the very few of his own MPs who had bothered to attend. While wondering if 50 returns per week would do the trick, Glen admitted his own party had completely failed on immigration while in power and that it had deserved to lose the last election because of it. Talk of kicking a man when he’s down.
Still, to give Chris some credit, at least he bothered to show his face. For an earlier statement by Ed Miliband on the state of climate change and nature, his opposite number, Claire Coutinho, didn’t bother. Perhaps she is punchdrunk from a year of always being on the wrong end of Ed’s sarcasm.
She is the original quarterwit. Someone who can only dream of being a halfwit. Or perhaps, she can no longer bring herself to defend her party’s increasingly climate sceptic conspiracy theories. Either way, it’s time to put her out of her misery.
So it was left to shadow junior minister Andrew Bowie to reply to Miliband’s impassioned statement on the need to act urgently to protect the planet. Bowie’s answer was to channel his inner Kemi. And Nigel Farage for that matter. Why should we do anything, he said. It probably wasn’t going to make any difference so just let the planet burn and flood. There was no point worrying about what might happen in 2050. Just drill, baby, drill.
Come the end of the statement there was just one Tory backbencher left in the chamber. This is the party that complains about everyone working from home. Do as I say, not as I do.