Shropshire Star

Political column - May 3

"Will she take this opportunity to make a public apology to people who have been..."

Published

Cries of "she has."

"Will she make a public apology..."

"She has! She has!"

The SNP's Joanna Cherry gave up. Her accusation was that the Windrush affair was a direct result of Theresa May's policies.

The response of the Prime Minister to her calls for an apology was to suggest that she hadn't been paying attention.

She had a point, as Mrs May had already repeated her apologies more than once earlier in the Prime Minister's Questions session.

It was the SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, who made one of the more telling interventions. There were, he said, an estimated 120,000 undocumented children who were entitled by law to UK citizenship - but only if they registered at a cost of £1,000.

"This is a new Windrush generation unable to secure jobs and rent properties... They should not be charged to exercise their rights. How can she possibly justify these policies?"

Theresa May didn't. Instead she sidestepped the question with some waffle about the public wanting a fair system which distinguished between legal and illegal immigration.

As for the exchanges between the Prime Minister and Jeremy Corbyn, they amounted to a tedious shouting of political slogans at each other.

Subject list: Windrush, British economy (thriving or ailing - discuss), police budgets and police numbers (linked or otherwise to levels of violent crime - discuss), homelessness, debt, child poverty, education, school budgets, the NHS...

And Mr Corbyn was obviously feeling lucky as he thought he might be able to squeeze out another apology.

"Will the Prime Minister apologise to NHS patients waiting longer than ever for the worst A&E waiting times on record?"

Incidentally, Mr Corbyn has stopped banging on about there being a winter crisis in the NHS. Before you get the idea that that is because things are getting better, he is now talking about it being an all-year crisis in the NHS.

Mrs May retorted that there were more people in work, fewer children in absolute poverty, and since November the Chancellor of the Exchequer had announced £10 billion extra for the NHS.

From the tone of the exchanges, you could almost believe that there might be local council elections on somewhere, perhaps in some big city down south.

In any event, their respective payoff lines sounded as if they came from election leaflets.

Corbyn: "With the Tories you pay more and you get less." May: "Conservative councils cost you less."

A couple of backbench Labour MPs brought up cases of elderly constituents who had had interminably long waits for ambulances. Mrs May's stock response is to ask them to send her the details and she will have somebody look in to them.

Tory Brexiteer Peter Bone created some bizarre imagery when he invited her to come to his Wellingborough constituency the day after Brexit. He said that she would be "carried shoulder high through the streets to the echoing of a cheering crowd and I will be able to show her the site where a statue to the Brexit Queen will be erected."

A rash promise indeed. Because if Brexit goes wrong Mrs May could instead be dragged through the streets while being pelted with offal before being shown the site of a pillory, built especially for her.