Ed Miliband revels in making Boris Johnson look
like a second-rate conman
John Crace
'He doesn't know his stuff': Ed Miliband challenges
Johnson on internal market bill
Standing in for Keir Starmer, the ex-Labour leader
demolished Johnson’s rambling defence of his internal market bill
@JohnJCrace
Mon 14 Sep
2020 20.49 BSTLast modified on Tue 15 Sep 2020 08.14 BST
You could
have been forgiven for imagining you were lost in a 2019 time warp. The House
of Commons debating the Brexit withdrawal bill, nearly a year after that very
bill had been passed. A bill that had been negotiated by the prime minister,
declared “an oven-ready triumph” by the prime minister and on which he had won
an 80-seat majority at the general election after promising a despairing
country that he would “Get Brexit Done”.
On the plus
side, though, we were treated to one of the best speeches of this and recent
parliaments from Ed Miliband as he comprehensively ripped Boris Johnson’s
facile and fraudulent arguments to shreds. Admittedly, it wasn’t the hardest of
tasks, up against a man who can barely remember what he believed yesterday or
even what excuses he might have made for his failures, but Miliband left Boris
hopelessly exposed.
It wasn’t
immediately clear why Johnson had even made the last-minute decision to open
the debate in person, as the business secretary, Alok Sharma, had been
originally handed the poisoned chalice. And would probably have done a far
better job as Sharma has the unique talent of putting even himself to sleep
whenever he opens his mouth. But perhaps hubris got the better of Boris. Or
maybe he’s just a common crook who can’t resist returning to the scene of the
crime. Either way, his guilt oozed from every pore.
This was
Boris at his very worst. Normally Johnson has little trouble in dealing in
bullshit and lies: in fact he has made a career out of it. Yet right from the
very start, he appeared nervous and defensive, even though a near empty chamber
saved him from having to take too many embarrassing interventions from both the
opposition and Conservative benches. Instead, what we got was total
incoherence.
The EU
wasn’t negotiating in good faith. It was trying to blockade clotted cream being
imported to Northern Ireland from Devon. The EU was trying to destroy the
Northern Ireland protocol and no British parliament could possibly sign up to
this. Except of course, it already had. Under his own leadership. Boris refused
almost all interventions from the Labour benches, instead choosing to take
those from the intellectually challenged Andrea Jenkyns and the timid rebel Bob
Neill, who said he might be prepared to break international law provided
parliament was allowed a specific vote on it first. Boris happily indulged him
in this nonsense.
Just one
Tory, the former attorney general Jeremy Wright, challenged Boris on the
ministerial code of breaking international law. Johnson ummed and ahed and said
that Suella Braverman – a lawyer whom you wouldn’t trust to witness a passport
application and had been chosen as attorney general for her compliance – had
reckoned that the government could do anything Boris wanted it to. Wright – as
with all the other former Tory attorney generals, prime ministers and cabinet
ministers of any integrity – just shook his head in disbelief.
Under
normal circumstances, the Labour leader would have replied for the opposition.
But Keir Starmer was self-isolating after one of his children had been found to
display coronavirus symptoms, so Miliband, as shadow business secretary, got to
make the speech he had originally prepared. And Miliband couldn’t believe his
luck, because many of his jibes might have fallen flat had they been levelled
at Sharma. So much more fun to have the person actually responsible for
trashing the reputation of both the country and the Conservative party in front
of you rather than a dull-witted, narcoleptic apparatchik.
Miliband
didn’t put a foot wrong, both goading the prime minister for his failure to
understand key aspects of the Northern Ireland protocol and inquiring how he
expected other countries to take us at our word if we were so willing to break
international treaties, before taking him down point by point. At first Boris
merely rolled his eyes, willing Ed to disappear, but by the end there was
nothing but stone-cold fury in his stares. Boris has been found out countless
times before by almost everyone who has had the misfortune to have dealings
with him, but seldom so comprehensively and so publicly.
Or with
such obvious enjoyment. Miliband knew he had Johnson bang to rights as a
second-rate conman and wasn’t going to let him off the hook. All his arguments
were delivered with the panache and flourish of a man who knew he had right on
his side. Even the Tories sensed it with only Bernard Jenkin foolish enough to
intervene on the prime minister’s behalf. Miliband did for him in a couple of
short sentences, saying that the Tory-led Northern Ireland select committee had
reported that the EU had been negotiating in good faith.
What
followed was one highlight after another. Serial incompetence of a man who
couldn’t remember it was his deal he was reneging on. The list of politicians
who agreed that the deal had protected the Northern Ireland protocol. The
observation there was already a dispute resolution procedure that didn’t
involve the failed state option. But the collector’s item was his invitation
for Boris to back up his assertion that the withdrawal agreement imposed a
blockade on GB goods into Northern Ireland.
“Come on,”
Ed said, his voice laced with condescension. “I know you’re a details man. Show
me the blockade. I will give way to you.” Boris remained almost immobile, the
blood draining from his face. He was so, so busted. But Miliband wasn’t
finished. He also enjoyed himself with the five possible reasons for breaking
the law. Especially the one about doing so in a specific and limited way. As if
not going really big by actually invading Brussels and executing Michel Barnier
somehow made it OK. He did, though, leave out a sixth reason. That Boris has
yet to come across a law that ever applied to him.
The
speeches that followed were something of an anticlimax in comparison. Bill Cash
found that he could be even more angry now that Brexit was happening than when
it wasn’t, while SNP leader Ian Blackford attacked Johnsons’s proposals to
remove powers from the devolved governments. Not that Boris was there to hear
them. He had sneaked out of the chamber shortly after his evisceration. It
turns out that Boris does have a humiliation threshold after all. And
Miliband had just found it.
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