Boris Johnson didn’t even bother turning to face his wannabe assassin. Because the moment Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle yelled ‘David Davis’ toward the end of PMQs it was obvious to everyone crammed into the Commons’ throbbing bear-pit what was coming next.
Keen observers of the Westminster mad house will know that whenever a Conservative leader is tottering, Mr Davis’s sniper’s bullet is rarely far behind.
Should breakfast TV bookers ever require a Tory to indulge in some early morning talk of mutiny, Basher’s yer man.
As the old rascal rose, he even tilted his gaze towards the press gallery as if to say, ‘Watch this, lads’.
Davis stood straight up on his feet and began.
Boris Johnson didn’t even bother turning to face his wannabe assassin. Because the moment Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle yelled ‘David Davis’ toward the end of PMQs it was obvious to everyone crammed into the Commons’ throbbing bear-pit what was coming next
Keen observers of the Westminster mad house will know that whenever a Conservative leader is tottering, Mr Davis’s sniper’s bullet is rarely far behind
‘I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take,’ he announced. The chamber was loaded and the hammer was cocked.
‘I’ll remind him of a quotation which may be familiar to his ear: Leopold Amery to Neville Chamberlain. “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!”’
From Labour’s benches came theatrical gasps. Pur-lease! Crossroads episodes have less predictable plotlines.
He licked a peppermint between tightly pressed lips as Davis sat down again. He swung the peppermint around his tongue and leaned forward to give William Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove, a wink. He could not have looked more pleased with himself if he’d kicked off his brogues and sparked up a self-congratulatory cigarillo.
The shots were fired. But did they strike the target? As blue-on-blue attacks go, it was hardly equal to Sir Geoffrey Howe’s skewering of Margaret Thatcher.
What made Sir Geoffrey’s ‘broken cricket bats’ speech so poisonous was that it was so out of character for him to rock the boat.
Davis, by contrast, is one of politics’ attention-seekers. One senses he’d crawl through an open sewer if it meant a plum slot on the Today programme.
His political antennae are not as tuned today as they were in the past.
From Labour’s benches came theatrical gasps. Pur-lease! Crossroads episodes have less predictable plotlines
It was he, lest we forget, who urged the PM to save Owen Paterson’s bacon, when the former minister was found guilty of ‘egregious’ breaches of lobbying rules by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.
Davis’s melodramatic intervention failed because Mr Johnson, somehow, had just pulled a pugilistic performance out of the bag. The farewell innings was actually a surprisingly feisty performance.
Dunno what he’d scoffed down for breakfast. This show required two servings of Ready Brek.
It was surprising that a man, who was likely to face a meeting with the noose at some point in his life, seemed so relaxed upon arriving.
Dawdling behind the Speaker’s chair, it was all jokey smiles and raised thumbs.
Policing minister Kit Malthouse pumped and rubbed his shoulders like a wrestler’s masseur. Chancellor Rishi Sunak stood close, tight as a pop star’s security detail, though rather less willing to take a bullet for his principal.
He was wearing a mask with a union flag on his face while he was sitting today at the Labour benches.
Not even Bury South MP Christian Wakeford’s choreographed defection to Labour prior to kick-off delivered the coup de grace some expected.
If anything it seemed to galvanise those ‘pork pie’ putschers on the Conservative benches.
‘Shame on you,’ they screamed as a glum-looking Wakeford was led off to his new seat, like a disgraced felon being bundled into the back of a Black Maria.
If you look at the mood in the central lobby afterwards, it is likely that few black armbands are worn over his defection.
If the welcome Wakeford received from his new colleagues was a tad tepid, the roars which greeted the PM’s arrival will have loosened the window putty.
Staring Labour’s new turncoat MP in the eye, he declared the Conservatives won Bury South at the last election ‘and we will win again’. He roared more.
Gone was Boris’s ‘woe-is-me’ routine that had been trotted out to such disastrous effect the previous day on Sky News. It was over. There was some zest. He was a pump for the economy. He celebrated the rollout of vaccines.
It was all soaked up by the front bench. One point I was afraid Nadine Dorries would need oxygen.
Sir Keir Starmer, his party leader, welcomed Mr Wakeford to his parliamentary office tonight
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Sterner cut a completely different figure. All of a sudden he’s looking frightfully pleased with himself. He’s already looking at the cushions for his Downing Street apartment, porte-etre.
He mocked the PM’s pitiful appearance on Sky but his questions lacked the venom of the previous week. The outrage about the Downing Street soirées gave way to some sneery amusement.
A series of gags Starmer made about heckling Tories (‘I see the Whips have ordered them to bring their own boos!’) failed to land. They seldom do.
The great prosecutor must have made juries squirm when he turned jocular.
Ian Blackford was called. Pffft! It’s possible to feel all tension melt away immediately. Once it’s Blackford who’s called, the PM is usually home and hosed.
Boris demanded that the SNP leader resign. Of course he did. It wouldn’t be PMQs if he didn’t. It’d be like the Rolling Stones booking Madison Square Garden and not playing Satisfaction.
Davis, who was shuffled by Alec Shelbrooke, North Dorset, Simon Hoare, and Simon Elmet, were the last of the participants in the session. They weren’t great cheerleaders, so he made a gesture for praises.
Both of them gave him an expression of indifference. Being an assassin is a lonely job, much like turningcoat.