Theatre goers are familiar with the disappointment on learning that the star will not appear and instead they will see the understudy. Yet sometimes the performance is more enjoyable. Such was the experience of MPs yesterday. Convention requires the Opposition Leader to absent himself from the House for PMQs when the Prime Minister is away (being given the brush off by Poland) and his place was taken by the Prime Minister in Waiting (aka Chancellor etc). The Opposition Leader’s role was taken by Angela Eagle, Shadow defence secretary, but also shadow of Osborne. Ah!
The result was an impeccably timed and very funny exchange of acerbic observations by both the PM in Waiting and perhaps even the Opposition Leader in Waiting? Many in the Commons yesterday must have hoped that neither would have to wait too long. They all had a lovely time. But there is a problem.
It is this. Parliament spends a good deal of time on its own stuff and laughing at its own jokes and doing too little that voters feel are things important to their everyday lives. Voters are not voting for and funding by their taxes a political variety show. This is why when they stop laughing MPs on all sides are baffled by the ever increasing support in his party (outside parliament) and the country for Jeremy Corbyn. Because he speaks for the ordinary people in plain language, devoid of theatricals and to the point. And he speaks for those who do not bother to vote but who might vote for him and his version of Labour. There are fifteen million of them to be precise. They don’t answer doors to canvassers, nor do they talk to opinion pollsters. But should they decide the moment has come in 2020, it could be quite a moment.
At least Corbyn had a big leg up from Blair. The disgraced former prime minister, to whom only Tories now listen because they are all dressed up in New Labour clothes, wrote an article in the Spectator (exactly) bemoaning the fact that Corbyn had been elected Labour leader. That should help Corbyn a lot.