Theresa May no longer avoids answering questions, she avoids avoiding them

In two grand hours of interrogation, the Prime Minister did not even so much as dignify a single question with a non-answer

It's not that Theresa May didn't answer a single question, it's that she didn't even bother pretending to try to (Parliament Live)

It is theoretically possible that when Yvette Cooper started eyeballing Theresa May and repeatedly shouting “ARE CAMERAS PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE? ARE CAMERAS PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE?” she genuinely thought the PM might go the full Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and crumble under the pressure.

But, much to no one’s surprise, Theresa May did not suddenly bellow “YOU’RE GOD DAMN RIGHT THEY ARE!” waking the 16-strong committee from their 90-minute-long slumber.

Instead, she transformed her face into a mask of utter disdain and returned the question if not quite with the contempt it deserved, then the contempt it was always going to get.

This was Ms May’s first appearance in a year before the Liaison Committee, the committee made of the chairs of all the other parliamentary committees. It has been, well, a busy year, but there is arguably comfort to be drawn in these turbulent times from our Prime Minister’s utterly undimmed resolve never to answer even the straightest question put to her.

With specific regard to “ARE CAMERAS PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE?”, this was a question regarding the potential hardness of the currently metaphysical future Irish border, which may or may not return at some point before or after the end of the as yet undefined transitional period after the UK leaves the single market and the customs union while maintaining full regulatory alignment with it from which it intends to gradually divert. But then you knew that.

Theresa May has promised there will be “no physical infrastructure” on any supposedly free-flowing border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But one such technological solution that has been proposed would involve automated number plate scanning for vehicles. Ah! Ah! But this would require cameras, Ms Cooper had worked out, and cameras, are physical infrastructure, are they not?

I’ve checked my notes. I’ve even watched back the footage, and, yes this is the exchange verbatim.

Yvette Cooper: “Are cameras physical infrastructure?”

Theresa May: “I’m not going to give a running commentary.”

Cooper: “Are cameras physical infrastructure.”

May: “I’m not going to give a running commentary.”

Cooper: “Cameras are physical. They’re not virtual.”

May: “I’ve said before, I’m not going to give a running commentary.”

Can you blame Cooper really? When you are trying to inflict damage on a tortoise that has not merely retreated into its shell but also superglued itself to the concrete floor, what more can you do but repeatedly jab a cocktail stick into its exposed neck cavity and hope for the best?

Shortly before this, Hilary Benn, chair of the Brexit Select Committee had sought to extract an answer to the question on how Theresa May could possibly guarantee there would be no hard border in Ireland, given, for example, cows currently freely wander across it, and after Brexit it is highly likely that different agricultural regulations will have to apply on either side.

As she answered, for a third consecutive time, that a hard border would be avoided because “I’ve told you we’re going to avoid a hard border,” the temptation to imagine the Prime Minister as a captain on D-Day became overwhelming.

“How are we going to get past the German guns captain?”

“I’ve told you we’re going to get past the German guns.”

“But how are we going to get past the German guns captain?”

“I can’t answer that question yet because we haven’t yet opened the landing craft door and run full frontal into their open fire, but thankfully we’re about to begin that phase of the battle, so we’re going to get past them.”

“But how are we going to get past them?”

“I’ve told you we’re going to get past them.”

“But how?”

At one point, Maria Miller wanted to know whether it was right that Harvey Weinstein had silenced his personal assistant with a non-disclosure agreement after he allegedly raped a colleague. Even this was considered too risky territory for a a rare female world leader to venture into with anything approaching an answer.

In the end, all this becomes a story about the waste of taxpayers' money. The mere man hours of preparation undergone by these 16 senior backbenchers, their various aides and researchers, not to mention the Prime Minister herself, for what is meant to be a grand and meaningful question and answer session, will run well into six figures. And yet, here she was not even waving the vaguest answer in the direction of even the slowest paced of questions.

At the end, the Committee Chair Dr Sarah Wollaston told the Prime Minister she “Hoped she’d return before the committee in three months time”.

She failed to answer that one either. We can only hope it’s a no.