It was pure method Grayling – but the Tories were wishing for Arcuri

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2019/oct/07/it-was-pure-method-grayling-but-the-tories-were-wishing-for-arcuri

Version 0 of 1.

A star is born. For a couple of months now, the government has been sending emails to casting agents, begging them to find a replacement for Chris Grayling. A minister so useless, so hapless that every appearance in the Commons is guaranteed to be a box office disaster. Many have been called, yet no one has quite come up to scratch. Not even Priti Patel or Liz Truss. Or James Cleverly with his definitive decisiveness graph. AKA My Graph by J Cleverly (aged 11 ¾). Stupidly on the x-axis and Cleverly on the y-axis – with next to nothing registering on the y.

But James Duddridge, a junior minister in the Brexit department, looks as if he might be the real deal. In this, his second audition standing in for Steve Barclay inside a week, he revealed his true potential. A man for whom practice makes progressively less perfect.

The incompetence could be taken as a given – that’s standard government issue. But what Duddridge brought to his role this time was pure method Grayling. The sense of peevishness that only comes from someone too stupid to realise just how out of their depth they are. The sweaty shiftiness of a man who is dimly aware he is crashing and burning but can’t put his finger on why. It can’t be long before he goes full Grayling and develops a nervous tic. The wobbling cheek was one of the few signs of intelligent life in the former transport secretary.

Quite what Duddridge has done to have been thrown under a bus twice in such quick succession is as yet unclear. The chief whip must have some devastating kompromat on him. But at least he’s providing some entertainment at a time of national crisis. He was in the Commons to answer an urgent question from Keir Starmer, requesting the government allow parliament to see the full 44-page legal text of the new withdrawal agreement the EU was in the process of rejecting, rather than just the seven-page summary it had so far been shown. The shadow Brexit secretary was understandably suspicious that there might be something of a mismatch between the two. Not least on provisions for a hard border and the erosion of workers’ rights.

“Don’t tell him, Duddridge,” yelled a handful of Tory MPs, who had been briefed to spread the word that only a fool would show their hand by making public a document that had already been seen by the EU27. Just in case the EU leaders hadn’t actually got round to examining it that closely. Besides, only traitors and close family wouldn’t trust the prime minister. The patriotic thing to do was to back the deal without reading it.

It quickly became clear that not even Duddridge – especially Duddridge – had been considered senior enough in government to be allowed to see the legal text. Which made him the ideal man to answer the question as he couldn’t inadvertently reveal anything incriminating. Except he was peculiarly inept in failing to give any even halfway credible reasons for not releasing the text. There would be no infrastructure at the border apart from the infrastructure at the border. Workers’ rights would actually be improved by deregulation. He was following in the footsteps of the Master. The One True Grayling.

Halfway through this excruciating ordeal, the few remaining Tory MPs were beginning to see what Boris Johnson had seen in Jennifer Arcuri and were wishing it was her at the dispatch box and not Duddridge. At least in her interview with Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on Good Morning Britain she had shown some style as she failed to answer any questions and could bullshit with the best of them. By the end she had failed to deny having sex with the prime minister nine times and had left most viewers wondering if it had been Morgan who had been having the affair with the prime minister and not her. After all, he’d already been kissing Donald Trump’s arse for years.

How different it could have been with Arcuri in the chamber.

“Will you publish the legal text?” said Starmer.

“You’ve been saying that for 10 minutes,” Arcuri would have replied. “Are you in love with me? Do you want to have sex with me?”

“Will you publish the legal text?” said Hilary Benn.

“I like to talk about Shakespeare. Come to one of my Google Hangouts.”

“Will you publish the legal text?” asked Jo Swinson.

“Can we talk about your sex life? I can’t help it if I’m a very successful entrepreneur whom blond, married men go crazy for.”

“OK, OK,” Chris Bryant would have then yelled. “You win. Forget the legal text. Just please take the idea of Boris pole dancing in a bikini out of my head.”