PMQs: Emily Thornberry and Damien Green's frivolity fails to hide seriousness of no-deal Brexit

PMQs: A bit of laughter amid the tears

Emily Thornberry and Damian Green surpassed their superiors, to the surprise of no one (PA)

If Prime Minister’s Questions serves any purpose at all, it is that the performances of Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition inform grander narratives on their suitability for office. While this particular instalment, in which Emily Thornberry and Damian Green surpassed their supposed superiors with embarrassing ease, was uncharacteristically entertaining, the public are hardly in need of even more evidence of the fact that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are not up to either their respective jobs, or each others.

But that is, of course, what they got. Naturally, most of the questions posed by Ms Thornberry were not questions, and none of the answers given by Damian Green were answers, but no one has expected such things in at least a hundred years. Rather, the new First Secretary of State danced Kate Bush like around the questions while at no point straying into their gravitational field.

“What will happen to the Irish border if we get no deal?” He was asked.

“It’s very important we get it right,” came the answer. “We want to have a deal. We want to have a good deal.”

“Will he confirm a plan for no deal exists?” He was asked again, after a thoroughly entertaining run through of the wildly dynamic positions taken on this huge question by the Foreign Secretary, the Brexit Secretary and everyone else in between in the months since Article 50 was triggered.

“It is the aim of the government to get a deal. We want to get the Irish border sorted.”

Since the end of March, absolutely nothing has happened to intimate that a deal on trade with the EU has become more and not less likely, not least as on Tuesday, Boris Johnson stood at the despatch box and told the EU it could “go whistle” for the money it requires before talks on a trade deal can even begin.

We all know the stakes could not be higher, the situation more dire, but in such times, we must suppose a little light relief is welcome.

Besides, the real horrors, we learned will come on Thursday. “Would the government be publishing the Treasury analysis of the risks of a no-deal Brexit,” Ms Thornberry asked, in the form of a rhetorical question to which the presumed answer was no.

What she got, to her and everyone else’s surprise was a “yes.” The Office of Budget Responsibility is, we were told, will be publishing this very thing on Thursday morning. An actual answer? No, course not. Damian Green had scarcely sat down again by the time the Office for Budget Responsibility clarified on twitter that, “Just to be clear, we are NOT assessing ‘no deal’ other possible Brexit negotiation outcomes.”

Oh well.

Tory backbench braying was at a lower level than usual, presumably helped by the boss not being around to be sucked up to. But special mention must go to Anna Soubry. When Ms Thornberry lamented the “Member for Newton Abbot having turned herself into Nick Griffin”, the member for Newton Abbot being “unintentional” N-bomb dropper Ann-Marie Morris, MS Soubry was not alone by by some margin the most audible in shouting, “Shame on you! Shame on you!”

Never being afraid to speak her mind, not least on matters Brexit, we must conclude Ms Soubry’s views are genuinely held. There will always be those in the Conservative party willing to stand up for others whose views remain unreconstructed since the 1950s. It is surprising, however, that Ms Soubry should be among them.