Section:GDN 1J PaGe:3 Edition Date:190831 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/8/2019 17:14 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
3
Marina
Hyde
B
arely three months ago, the work and
pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, gave
a speech in which she explained that
“Being in a job gives a person dignity ”.
Does it always though, Amber? There
is currently no job in the UK with
less dignity than cabinet minister.
Desperate people are doing things for
crack rocks round the back of disused warehouses that
are signifi cantly more dignifi ed than signing up to Boris
Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament , even when
you said it was the last thing you’d ever do about 10
minutes ago.
So who are they, this prorogue’s gallery? In one sense,
they’re anyone who hasn’t resigned when a minority
government lies in order to execute this dick move –
which is to say, literally all of them apart from George
Young , a whip in the Lords who quit on Thursday.
To put that in perspective, Young once reportedly
described the homeless as “the people you step over
when you are coming out of the opera”. So anyone who
hasn’t walked from this government has been morally
outclassed by that guy.
But along with Rudd, those who explicitly ruled
out prorogation include the Saj. On Thursday night,
the chancellor had his special adviser summoned to
Downing Street by Dominic Cummings, then fi red and
escorted from the premises. Did the Saj watch manfully
through the net curtains of No 11? Will he be the fi rst
to punch his own refl ection in the bathroom mirror
because he just can’t face himself? Or will it be culture
secretary Nicky Morgan, whose former prorogation
verdict – “clearly a mad suggestion” – should double as
her LinkedIn biography?
Or Matt Hancock, who started his summer doing
a leadership bid photoshoot with a horse , declaring
“prorogation would mean the end of the Conservative
party”? Look at him now. Look at Matt Hancock now. Has
a chap in a V-neck T-shirt ever been so horrifyingly out
of his depth? Matt Hancock is the guy in a Sky One drama
about a stag weekend who ends up properly sobbing
on a Cyprus cliff at 4am, as they tip a 5ft 8in polythene
package off it, screaming at the best man: “This is so
fucked up! You said it was going to be fun! I’M MEANT TO
BE GETTING MARRIED NEXT WEEK!”Boris Johnson,
Sajid Javid and
Amber Rudd
PHOTOGRAPH: AARON
CHOWN/PA WIREAnd so to the best man. According to today’s Times ,
Cummings has ordered the government’s £100m
no-deal public information campaign to launch
next week, under the slogan “GET READY”. Mugs
and T-shirts bearing the slogan have been ordered
for Whitehall.
Divulging this plan to the paper, a campaign source
pants: “Dom Cummings is bringing a sub machine gun
to a knife fi ght.” Ooooooooooh! Is this supposed to be
as swashbuckling as when that guy pulls a sword but
Indiana Jones just gets out his pistol and shoots him?
Because unlike seemingly everyone in Cummings’
Westminster orbit, I’m getting a fl at zero reading on
my frisson-ometer. Maybe it’s because the EU can
bring a barrel bomb to the same knife fi ght? Still, tell
me something, O anonymous briefer: when Cummings
takes fi ve minutes for refreshment in Whitehall,
do a bunch of ministers whisper “Diet Coke break,
girls!” , then rush to the window and fan themselves
while watching him delve around in his ethical tote
for another basic bitch strategy from Steve Bannon’s
playbook? Because you all come off like you do.
All in all, there were very few bright spots in this
dark political week. At least we haven’t seen Dominic
Raab for a while. The foreign secretary is imagined to
have been given time off to deal with the problematic
contents of his lock-up, dispatched by Cummings with
the words: “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
You’ve got two days to sort it. Shapps’ll help you.”E
lsewhere, the Brexit secretary, Steve
Barclay, solemnly explained : “The car
industry’s ‘just-in-time’ supply chains
rely on fl uid cross-Channel trade routes
... We need to start talks now on how
we make sure this fl ow continues if
we leave without a deal.” Now? Just-
in-time supply chains are a concept
so simple and so widely understood so long ago that it
probably formed the basis of a three-episode story arc
of Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service in early 2017.
Great to have you onboard the train towards a clue,
secretary of state!
Steve’s fellow passengers include many of the alleged
forces against no deal , who seem to have dimly realised
the government is both shameless and ruthless. Yes,
though some of them have spent a lifetime telling
everyone the Tories are monsters who never stop at
anything , it’s almost as if they forgot to tell themselves.
For so many opponents of no deal – from Labour to
some Tories to the Lib Dems and beyond – the politics of
moving to make it impossible were painful, so they put
it off till the absolute 11th hour.
They looked caught on the hop this week. I’m
reminded of a Daily Show moment where Jon Stewart
wondered at an interviewer asking George W Bush if he
believed in spanking. “Does he believe in spanking? He
believes in EXECUTING THE RETARDED. Of course he
believes in spanking.” We can’t salute that terminology,
but you get the point. Many of these people have spent
years telling us that the government cheerily kill its own
citizens with austerity. Put like that, it feels unlikely
they were going to suddenly draw the taste line at using
an executive instrument.
Perhaps the getting-of-shit-together will happen
“just in time”. And yet, perhaps it won’t. I hate to adapt
a Cummings mug slogan, but maybe all sorts of people
should have “GOT READY” rather earlier than they did?The Saj cowers
as Cummings
‘gets ready’ for
the fi nal act
Opinion
Did Javid
watch
manfully through
the curtains of No 11
as his special adviser
was escorted from
Downing Street?
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