Political Column - December 21

We wish you a Merry Christmas, KAPOW!

We wish you a Merry Christmas, BIFF!

And a Happy New Year. YEOW!

The political festive spirit was in full flow in the last Prime Minister's Questions of the year when there were some prize turkeys on display.

At different times of 2017 you would not have bet on either Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn making it to Christmas.

So they both have a success in common - survival.

Mrs May can also look back on a year in which she streamlined the Parliamentary Tory party in June and delayed Brexit by two years without anybody noticing, while Jeremy Corbyn conducted Labour's most successful failed general election campaign in modern political history.

Relatively speaking, they are riding high.

The stage was set for some knockabout stuff, but it got off to a civilised start. Mrs May wished all MPs and staff a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and she was sure that the whole House would wish to join her in sending warm Christmas messages to members of the armed forces stationed overseas.

Jeremy was on board with that, but we got an inkling of the direction he was going when he went on to pay a tribute to "our very hard-working National Health Service staff. Many of them, unlike us, won't get a break this Christmas."

And then he got to the point: "Is the Prime Minister satisfied that the NHS has the resources it needs this winter?"

The answer was yes. Or it could be inferred to be yes, as only the naive would believe that Prime Minister's Questions involves the Prime Minister actually answering questions. What she actually said was that the NHS had prepared more extensively for this winter than ever before.

Mr Corbyn got stuck in with lots of figures to hand. Some of it even had overtones of the Biblical story. For instance, last week 12,000 patients have been kept waiting in the back of ambulances because "there was no room at the NHS."

Mrs May: "He knows full well that NHS funding is at record levels... Time after time the Right Honourable Gentleman has come to this House and will complain about what is happening in the health service. Can I just tell the House what is happening in the health service..."

Before she had a chance to launch into her list of wonderful things happening in the NHS under the Tories, the cry of "Chaos!" went up from the Opposition benches.

Whether or not the NHS is having enough money spent on it, nobody could say that it is suffering from a shortage of statistics.

Jeremy and Theresa have sackfuls. One glance down at their notes and they can come up with pages and pages of them.

Statistics surely don't lie. They show that (A): The NHS is falling apart, with thousands of people stuck in ambulances, staff shortages, funding cuts, etc. And (B): The NHS is doing a wonderful job, with more and more people being treated, improved diagnostic and survival rates, and lots and lots of money being spent on it.

From the exchanges we learned that Mrs May is recklessly putting the NHS at risk while being proud of it at the same time.

Once again Mr Corbyn chose not to raise the issue of Brexit, possibly because he's waiting to be told what Labour's policy is first.

Labour backbencher Clive Efford was more interested in cooking arrangements at Downing Street.

"Last year the Prime Minister told the Radio Times that on Christmas Day she likes to prepare and cook her own goose..." he began.

"We know what's coming," said a voice, amid laughter.

Mr Efford continued: "In the spirit of Christmas, can I suggest to her in order to extract the maximum pleasure from the messy job of stuffing her goose, that she names it either Michael or Boris."

Speaker: "Order! I'm sure the Prime Minister's got better taste than that."

Mrs May: "I think I'll be having to resist the temptation to call the goose Jeremy."

And so the Parliamentary curtain falls for 2017.

My political predictions for 2018? - Geese will be cooked, chickens will come home to roost, and there will be foxes in the hen house.