Lloyd Evans

Remainers were there too. The first people I met at the Brexit Day festivities were opposed to the whole idea. I found them on Westminster Bridge, a man and his wife, posing with an EU flag. When the man spoke his voice faltered as if his pet spaniel had just died. ‘I married a German woman. I’ve been brought up to tolerate other cultures and lifestyles.’ I asked which of the many crises outlined by Project Fear would strike us first. ‘Economic slump,’ he said. Will Britain ever re-join? ‘Maybe in two generations.’ A couple with a toddler spotted the EU flag and joined us for a chat. They’d planned to enlist in a Remain Fightback Demo and were dismayed by the poor turnout.

Jeremy Corbyn has stopped asking questions at PMQs. The lecture-circuit now looms for the Labour leader, so he uses the Wednesday sessions to practise the Grand Orations he will soon be making to drowsy socialists in overheated conference-halls around the world. He’s unlikely to match the fees commanded by the world’s top lecture-stars, Tony Blair and Barack Obama. His performance lacks bounce or crackle. He’s incapable channelling either passion or excitement and he simply recites his bullet-points like a sleep-deprived Bingo-caller. And his jokes misfire. Today he opened with a gag about the presenter of Just A Minute who died yesterday, aged 96. ‘Mr Speaker,’ said Corbyn, ‘can we take a minute to pay tribute to Nicholas Parsons.

PMQs began with a tussle over Universal Credit. Jeremy Corbyn’s team of wordsmiths and brainstormers had spent the morning ransacking a thesaurus for words meaning ‘destructive’. They found ‘broken, damaging, dangerous, callous, cruel, punitive and vicious.’ They added ‘very cruel’ for good measure. These were the labels Corbyn applied to Universal Credit. ‘It should go,’ he urged. As for ‘very cruel’, he spoke of ‘the very cruel and callous two-child limit which caps benefits for larger families.’ Now that Britain’s parents have received this warning, they can avoid the ‘very cruel’ cap by capping their fecundity.

What’s John Bercow up to these days? The ex-Speaker is enjoying the limelight, of course, but he isn’t necessarily cashing in. Last Friday, he did a solo gig at a community centre in Holland Park where his appearance raised thousands of pounds for a local charity. He charged no fee. And he spent time before and after his speech chatting happily to anyone who approached him. But then Bercow has always liked to talk. His parents, who noticed their son’s verbosity, said: ‘John, generally speaking, is generally speaking.’ He made this joke against himself during his hour-long speech. It wasn’t his only essay in self-mockery: ‘We may be short,’ he said, on behalf of smaller people everywhere, ‘but we’re environmentally friendly.

Jeremy Corbyn now cuts the sorriest figure in Westminster. The crackle has gone out of his cornflakes. The chain is rusty, the tyres are flat, the mechanism can barely move. Like Big Ben itself, this old bell has lost its clapper. The Labour leader still inspires a vocal greeting at PMQs but it’s the sort of semi-ironic ovation that might greet a fat schoolkid as he completes the 100m in just under two minutes. When Corbyn speaks he recites his questions in a zestless drone. And yet a great opportunity is being missed. Labour’s leadership candidates should take turns to spar with Boris as part of the contest. But no. We’re stuck with a man who wouldn’t even pass an audition to play himself.