A bad day for Grieve, the rebel Tory who forgot how to rebel

Sometimes it’s the cleverest people who turn out to be the most stupid. Or certainly the most gullible. Before Dominic Grieve had spoken, the debate on parliament having a meaningful vote in the event of a no-deal Brexit had been on a knife-edge.

The government whips had feverishly patrolled the Tory benches, searching for the slightest sign of weakness in suspected rebels. David Davis had slurred his way through his opening remarks, punch-drunk and out of his depth: the Brexit negotiations have barely started and he already looks as if he has had enough. Kier Starmer had been a model of icy cool lucidity as he tore holes in what passed for the Brexit secretary’s arguments. Game on.

Then Grieve rose to his feet. The Tory backbencher with the reputation for being one of the sharper brains in Westminster. A man who prided himself on both his intellect and his integrity. A man who had been misled by the false promises of the prime minister on this very issue just a week previously and had declared to the world that he wouldn’t get fooled again. A man with the determination to take on the government a second time. The Luke Skywalker of the Rebel Alliance.

His was a brilliant amendment, he said modestly. Not just brilliant, but necessary to protect the sovereignty of the parliament he adored. He paused to allow himself a theatrical wipe of the forehead. MPs from both sides of the house leaned in, hanging on to his words. Luke cleared his throat. There was just one problem with his brilliant and necessary amendment. He couldn’t actually vote for it because the government had promised him another compromise that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Not that Luke was going to withdraw his amendment, because he couldn’t allow anything so brilliant and necessary to go to waste. So he was letting it stand for others to vote for if they wanted to. It would be wrong of him to deny them the opportunity. But when push came to shove, he had suddenly remembered that his first loyalty was to his party rather than to the country. Every lawyer has his price and Grieve had just established his. He was the rebel who forgot to rebel.

Luke wasn’t quite finished. Having led his troops up to the top of the hill and marched them down again – Labour MPs weren’t slow to call him the Grand Old Duke of York – he made a sobbing plea for the Brexit debate to be conducted in a kinder, more collegiate way. Now was the time for unity. “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,” he said. Using the same line that Enoch Powell had used in his “rivers of blood” speech was perhaps an error of judgment. One among many.

The bullying and the name-calling had made the atmosphere unbearably toxic. It had to stop, Grieve demanded. Now. Julian Smith, the chief whip, looked astonished. Why would he stop doing something that was so clearly effective? He’d seen off Luke Skywalker with a few easy lies and threats. And with the ringleader decapitated, many of the more feeble-minded rebels would melt away. Game over.

No one could quite believe what they had just heard. Labour’s Hilary Benn and Chris Leslie made desperate attempts to get Grieve to change his mind at the last minute. They tried making things as plain as possible for him. The compromise he had accepted committed the government to do no more than take note of the fact that parliament was a wee bit concerned about the no-deal on offer. And then ignore it. Surely even a halfwit could see that it was a meaningless meaningful vote. Luke smiled beatifically and ignored them. The Force was with him. The Ego had landed.

With the rebellion dead in the water, Davis chilled out and put his feet up on the dispatch box. Happy days. An ashen Theresa May sneaked into the chamber, looking both relieved and guilty. Unable to quite believe that her indecision and duplicity had won the day again.

There was even time for the government whips to call off their insistence that even the very ill MPs should be made to pass through the lobby, because the votes were in the bag. But then they thought why bother? Make them suffer. So we were treated to the sight of Labour’s Naz Shah being pushed through the Commons in a wheelchair while clutching a sick bucket. A shabby end to a shabby day.