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Theresa May's weak statement on Brexit offered Corbyn all the ammunition he needs

Ominously, Ms May did not mention progress on the divorce bill: Reuters
Ominously, Ms May did not mention progress on the divorce bill: Reuters

One of the 101 uses for a politically dead Theresa May these days is to provide comic material for Jeremy Corbyn. Still no great shakes as a Commons performer (though much improved on earlier phases of his leadership), the floundering, and plainly embarrassed, plainly beleaguered Prime Minister offers a rich vein of comic possibilities.

Arranged on her front bench are the very fractious cabinet ministers who have made her life a living hell; Mr Corbyn was happy to remind her of it today as she faced questions about last week’s EU summit. Behind her were the tormenters on her own back benches who believe that “no deal” is not to be feared, but aimed for and welcomed; Mr Corbyn made due reference to them too. Across the Channel lie what the Chancellor, in a moment of madness, described as “the enemy”; Mr Corbyn reminded him and the rest of the Conservative Party just how great a mess they are in.

Most pointedly, the Labour leader sighed with theatrical emphasis that we are living through a groundhog day. Here again the Prime Minister provided all the prompts he needed: we were informed by Ms May that the two sides are within “touching distance” of a deal on EU nationals; that there is “momentum” in the talks; and that there will be no physical border between Britain and Ireland. All these things have been said before, and, as before, there was no more evidence of actual progress, let alone firm agreement, still less the completion of the first phase of the Brexit talks. Ominously, Ms May did not mention progress on the divorce bill.

Like some latter day King Lear equipped with Hush Puppies and a prominent paunch, the former Chancellor Ken Clark wailed into the intellectual void that is British parliamentary democracy that the country might be better off with some sort of national consensus across parties about what an eventual deal, including a transitional phase, might look like.

He suggested a “trusted” minister be deputed by Ms May to approach the opposition parties with a view to such a consensus. If only Ms May possessed more ministers she could indeed trust. Perhaps he was being mischievous or wilfully disingenuous, but he seems not to have noticed quite how partisan Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party has become. He might as well have asked for the Big Friendly Giant to be seconded to the task, with Spider-Man and the Honey Monster as alternate deputies during the discussion with Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer.

And yet the stakes for the nation are as high as ever. If it is true, as some leaked accounts suggest, that Ms May “begged” the European Commission for a deal, then good. If she told them that she was a prisoner of her own party, she was telling them the brutal truth, and usefully so. If she asked for a deal she could sell to Parliament then that too is no less than an obvious reality. There are some signals that the EU side of the negotiations are waking up to the possibility that the UK’s exit from the bloc will harm both sides, and that the British might even “do a runner” on their contributions.

Even if it did not directly hit the EU badly, no one on the other side of the Channel can view the possibility of a deep economic recession in the UK with equanimity. They may recall the way the Greek debt crises sent shock waves through the continent, and that would be a much smaller shock to the economic system than a hard Brexit.

Even a soft Brexit with a long implementation period would be enormously disruptive to manufacturers, bankers, farmers and many others. We may not be much nearer a solution to any of these issues – each representing an enormous change in itself – but the UK and the rest of the EU may be edging closer to a reckoning with the reality of what is about to befall the entire continent. Perhaps people are coming to see that no Brexit is better than no deal. That much is, relatively, new.