Albert Einstein defined madness as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. Jeremy Corbyn today topped-off a staggeringly poor PMQs performance – naturally, in blindingly severe contrast to last week’s outing – by calling on the Prime Minister to resign. He screeched:
“If the prime minister cannot negotiate a good deal for Britain why doesn’t she step aside and let Labour negotiate… Step aside and make way for those who will.”
In October last year Jezza stood in exactly the same spot and wailed across the despatch box:
“Isn’t it the case that if the PM can’t lead, she should leave?”
Just three days before last year’s general election, when asked whether he would call on May to resign over police numbers, Corbyn replied:
“Indeed I would.”
The same month he said May must:
“Go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country.”
Then in September he demanded of her:
“For Britain’s sake pull yourself together or make way.”
Every few weeks, at an increasing frequency, perhaps altered by imperceptible changes in the earth’s magnetic field (observable only to Piers Corbyn) – or due to signal fluctuations received from the short wave radio housed in the attic of the Russian Embassy – Jezza’s behaviour suddenly enters an almost lycanthropic mode. In the dead of night he morphs into the ‘resign now’ monster, a humiliating Hyde to his bumbling Jekyll, an embarrassing form of political lunacy. At PMQs the mask slips and we see a lone oddball, repeatedly bashing his head against the proverbial brick wall, endlessly howling at the moon…
The crescendo to Jezza’s latest lunchtime flop took the form of a series of criticisms of the Prime Minister over Brexit, specifically that her Cabinet were experiencing considerable division and “friction” on the issue. Being criticised by Corbyn’s Labour Party over unity on Brexit is like receiving a lecture on pacifism and non-violence from Popeye. Here’s how the Prime Minister should have replied: first, she should have pointed out that for much of the last two years Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said the UK would stay in the single market and “a” customs union during transition period, then leave the single market. But Corbyn whipped votes against single market and customs union membership…
Meanwhile, Deputy Leader Tom Watson has said all along that the party could stay in the single market and customs union permanently after the transition period is over. But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said all along that we must leave the single market to respect the referendum result. Further along the shadow frontbench, Diane Abbott and Clive Lewis said that we should somehow keep freedom of movement – but didn’t elaborate on how. Keir Starmer, at the same time, has always said freedom of movement ends with Brexit. Barry Gardiner famously said staying in the customs union would be a disaster, but then he u-turned, and said we should stay in. Meanwhile, it emerges the Shadow Brexit team has been colluding with Barnier, the Blarite backbenchers want to stop Brexit altogether and the Leader’s Office want not only to leave but to punish the neoliberal EU. In other words, as frictionless as Jezza’s beard after a lieu day on the allotment…
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