PMQs: That deafening silence was the sound of democracy in total failure

The economy's crashed, the country's split and the Prime Minister's resigned, but this just wasn't Jeremy Corbyn's week

(Sky)

The Prime Minister has crashed the economy, broken up his country, exploded his party and, of course, resigned.

These are the sort of weeks where, if you’re Leader of the Opposition, you should really be looking for a win.

In the end, there were, if we may borrow from the lexicon of this week’s other great international embarrassment, ‘a lot of positives to take’ for Jeremy Corbyn from a 1-0 loss that never really got going.

Both his Shadow Defence Secretary and his Deputy Leader had made it back from Glastonbury. And while no one can claim to have known who most of the people on his front bench actually were, they did all appear to be human beings. ‘Il Gato’, widely tipped for the Defra role, was nowhere to be seen, which means either the rumours were untrue or Mr Corbyn’s cat had accepted the position but already resigned.

Of course, you can’t directly blame Mr Corbyn for somehow managing to turn this entirely unprecedented Conservative party failure into a story about him. He is not actively plotting his own downfall. Not yet, at least. That said, had he heeded the advice of 80 per cent of his parliamentary party and done the dignified thing, somebody else might have had the opportunity to do what David Cameron has been doing with truly gleeful abandon for the last nine months: kick your opponents when they’re down.

That PMQs passed in near total silence from beginning to end was profoundly unnerving. The public might not like it but the noise level in the house is an accurate metric of the mechanics of democracy functioning properly. No noise. No government. No opposition. A totality of failure. The silence at the end of the world will be just as loud as this.

We all know now that Cameron’s modus operandi on these occasions is to wait for the end of his sixth question to land his most brutal punch on Corbyn, the point at which he is unable to reply. As the questions and answers went back and forth, neither man’s voice raising above a dreary monotone, it appeared that the final flourish might not come, but it did. “It might not be in my party’s interests, but it is in the national interest. For heaven’s sake man, Go,” he thundered.

Corbyn reverted to his usual sparrow stare. His MPs, 80 per cent of them, folded their arms, looked down, scrolled through their phones. To think - they had bothered to have a secret ballot.

There are few words worth reporting from what never rose above a political wake, save for an intervention from Bernard Jenkin, one of John Major’s ‘bastards’ the Maastricht Rebels, who have risen again in the last few months, still undead after a quarter century of public anonymity.

“Will he take this opportunity to condemn the ridiculous and revolting behaviour of a certain MEP in the European Parliament yesterday," Jenkin opined, the piety turned up to eleven. “ Will he make it clear that that MEP does not represent this country and he does not represent even the vast majority of patriotic and law-abiding people who voted leave in the referendum?”

Who’d be Father Christmas in the Jenkin household? Empty the stocking, eat the satsuma then as he disappears up the chimney, condemn Santa Claus for finally giving you what you’ve always wanted.

Celebrate the ends, frantically disassociate yourself from the means, and their poisonous aftermath.

Even the omnipotent Prospero needed Caliban to carry his firewood for him. The Tory bastards have delivered their shipwreck. Now they break their staff and drown their book. But this thing of darkness? No. I do not acknowledge mine.

Even in the wake of the most total failure of Westminster politics, it is almost to be admired that someone found a way to shame themselves yet further.