With trousers billowing, she was a carpet buyer in a souk: QUENTIN LETTS hears the PM get down to business on Brexit
Theresa May wore Black Watch tartan and bell-bottom trousers for her Brexit speech
Under the twinkle of Lancaster House bling and a Guercino ceiling mural of fluted cherubs serenading St Chrysogonus, Theresa May gave the Europhiles some calmly stated what-for.
She had dressed in Black Watch tartan, bell-bottom trousers, flattish shoes whose metallic heels reflected the TV lights. Foreign plenipotentiaries had gathered to hear her Brexit intentions. All the main Continental ambassadors were there.
Mrs May followed the tactics of the souk visitor who starts carpet-buying negotiations by striding towards the door-flap saying ‘there’s nothing much I want here’.
That is usually a surer way of securing a cheap carpet than by biting on your lip and claiming, as David Cameron half-heartedly did, that ‘nothing is off the table’.
We were in the Long Gallery, where Churchill threw his Coronation banquet in 1953. Wedding-cake architecture abounded. The room was long and high enough for a couple of professional cricket nets at each end. Boris, Liam Fox and Amber Rudd sat at Mrs May’s feet, not far from our new man in Brussels, Sir Tim ‘Beardy’ Barrow.
We reptiles of the Press were off to stage left. I was a few yards from glamorously coiffed Jacqueline Minor, European Commission envoy to London, in what looked like a Hermes scarf.
Mrs May entered alone. Trousers billowing, she took her place in front of a pale lectern marked ‘A Global Britain’. There were no pleasantries.
Soon she confirmed that we would quit the single market and customs union, those two tanktraps hardly any voter had worried about until the Cleggs and Mandelsons started moaning about them after June 23’s Leave vote.
One cause of concern for us Outies may be the leeway on transitional arrangements, although Mrs May said she wanted to avoid ‘some kind of permanent political purgatory’ (there speaks a clergyman’s daughter).
The Prime Minister followed the tactics of the souk visitor who starts carpet-buying negotiations by striding towards the door-flap saying ‘there’s nothing much I want here’, says Quentin Letts
I also note that in her text, when she said ‘membership of the single market’, the word ‘membership’ was underlined every time. Does that indicate wriggle room? If something could be found that entailed association without actual membership, would No 10 bite?
Early on, Mrs May spoke of ‘our precious Union’. She meant the UK, not EU. We were a ‘profoundly internationalist’ people and the EU should not think we were going into some sort of insular funk. Rather we were leaving in order to think bigger.
Brussels’ Mrs Minor opened an elegant notepad and, nail-varnished fingers moving discreetly, started to write occasional words.
A roving BBC camera tried to film what she was writing. She shielded her script, a school pupil denying her neighbour a crib. Who can blame her? Those cheeky imps in broadcasting. Worse than any tabloid hack!
Beside Mrs Minor sat a bespectacled representative from the European Parliament. He kept murmuring into Mrs Minor’s left ear. Much of the time they maintained a placid façade but at two points – when Mrs May said Britain’s ‘vast’ contributions to the EU would definitely end – they became visibly vexed. The EU Parliament man scowled, rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Jacqueline Minor, European Commission envoy to London, was in the audience for the speech
Mrs Minor extended her left hand, talons flying forth in a gesture that seemed to signal irritated exasperation. She did this both times the cash contribution was mentioned.
It may be the bottom line rather than any high-flown principles that most interests Juncker & Co.
But Mrs Minor also looked pleased – a furtive, creamy smile – when Mrs May noted that EU personnel have been ‘keeping their discipline’ in not giving away detail about their negotiating intentions.
Near the end of her speech Mrs May did some sabre-polishing, telling Johnny Continental that Britain was up for a proper fight if things turned nasty. Some of the ambassadors started smirking during this. Mrs Minor sneezed. From around her came numerous translations for ‘bless you’ – ‘Gesundheit!’, ‘prosit!’, ‘sante!’, ‘terviseks!’.
That one moment demonstrated the natural politeness of the diplomatic corps but also, perhaps, what a Tower of Babel the EU has become. It seems that soon we really will be out of it. Hooray.
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