Who knew? Being nice to people sometimes pays dividends. Since becoming prime minister, Rishi Sunak has been going out of the way to schmooze other world leaders. So much so, that his relationship with Emmanuel Macron has morphed from a flirtatious bromance to long-term commitment inside a week.
Clearly Rish! ringing up the French president every night pleading with him to be his friend – “I love you, I love you. Be my friend. PLEASE. P-L-E-A-S-E. Just tell me what you want. I’m not like the others. Boris and Truss may have laughed at you. But I look up to you. Literally. I love you, I love you. Just tell me what I have to do to be your friend” – is the way to Manu’s heart.
As Macron and Sunak prepare to hang out in Bali for the G20 – loving the trainers, dude! – the UK and France have signed a deal to try to limit the number of small boats crossing the Channel. We hand over £62m and a few police to keep watch sur les plages. And the French agree that they will increase the numbers of their gendarmes and try to persuade them to keep leurs yeux ouverts. What could possibly go wrong?
The entente cordiale has also spread down the food chain as far as Suella Braverman. Well, up to a point. Leaky Sue wasn’t so thrilled by the new deal that she would go so far as to give it full parliamentary honours with its own ministerial statement, but she wasn’t actually going to actively rubbish it during Home Office questions. Rather she just proceeded to damn it with faint praise.
There again, this was Suella at her most generous. At heart the home secretary believes that every asylum seeker is just a foreigner trying to get a free holiday in a UK five star hotel. Hell, Brits don’t try to sneak into Albania in small boats from Corfu and expect to be put up for free. So why should we be so damned welcoming to Albanians coming here?
“The new deal is a step forward,” Leaky Sue insisted, as several Tory backbenchers pointed out that it probably wouldn’t do that much to prevent people coming to the UK. As in, it wasn’t actively a step backwards. She wasn’t going to put a figure on just how many fewer refugees would now make the crossing, as that wasn’t the right metric. It was more about establishing new mood music. To make people feel even less welcome than they already did.
Talking of which, Tory backbencher Luke Evans was disturbed by reports that people were put up in a hotel in his constituency that had been deemed a fire hazard. Braverman merely looked confused. What was the problem? So the place might go up in flames. Big deal. Before you know it, refugees will be expecting their own rooms with hot and cold running water.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, stirred things up with a few home truths. Cooperation with the French was always a good idea – shame it had taken the Tories 12 years to work that one out – but the deal didn’t go nearly far enough. In any case, the government’s own nationality and borders bill was making it harder to prosecute anyone. And as for the Rwanda scheme … At this, Leaky Sue momentarily lost her bearings and the compassionate, conciliatory veneer peeled off. Labour just wanted unlimited immigration, she sneered. Er, it doesn’t.
The rest of Home Office questions passed off relatively uneventfully. Junior minister Chris Philp – never knowingly under uselessed – tried to persuade everyone that police numbers really were going up. At least they were if you counted the imaginary 20,000 extra officers that were being recruited next year.
Even some of his own backbenchers looked surprised by that and tried to talk him down. But Philp was in a world of his own, where the imaginary and the real were indistinguishable. Labour’s Charlotte Nichols wondered whether now was the time to make psilocybin a schedule two drug. Not that it would make much difference to Philp’s consumption. He is the sort of minister who can only exist in a hallucinatory, psychedelic world. At least that’s the only thing that explains what he is doing in government.
There was also a brief appearance from Boris Johnson. Dropping in briefly from his latest holiday, The Convict had briefly remembered that he was supposed to represent Uxbridge and that he was on course to lose his seat at the next election. So he showed his face for 10 minutes to ask about Uxbridge police station but didn’t seem that bothered by the lack of an answer. He had done his bit. He’s all heart.
As for Leaky Sue, she wandered off, happy enough to have avoided further scrutiny. Not so long ago, her job was on the line. She had been fired for breaking the ministerial code, with countless other offences waiting to be taken into consideration. But she appears to have weathered the storm. For now. No one is questioning her temperament. Or her ability. Everyone just accepts she is the wrong person in the wrong job, but everyone has lost the will to point it out. They are just sitting back and waiting for her to fail. It probably won’t be long.
Things have moved on. First we had Gavin Williamson. The ex-cabinet minister. Three times removed. Now we are on to Dominic “Psycho” Raab. The man whose anger vein lights up the Commons. Just about the only person who doesn’t know there’s a problem with Dom is Rish!.
“Dom is a lovely man,” squeaked Sunak in Bali. “He’s never done anything to me.” Other than force him to give him a job. But hey! It’s anti-bullying week, so maybe we should all step back from bullying Dom. Even the bullies deserve an even break. From government by Bullingdon Club to government by a club of bullies.
• A year in Westminster with John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci
Join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci for a look back at another chaotic year in Westminster, live at Kings Place in London, or via the livestream. Wednesday 7 December 2022, 7pm-8.15pm GMT. Book tickets here.
