SOLIDARITY, it appears, only stretches so far.
With two weeks to go to the big day, one might have assumed that when it came to the EU referendum Jezza and Dave would be shoulder to shoulder. But no.
The chief comrade, after paying tribute to “the greatest” - not Keir Hardie or Nye Bevan but Mohammed Ali – he railed about the “scandalous scourge” of zero hours contracts.
Dave chose to ramble on about firms not paying the minimum wage, misspeaking twice about “unscrupulous employees” and quickly correcting himself to say “unscrupulous employers”; Freudian slip there.
Then the hairy leftie focused on the euro splits in the referendum with the Tory toff insisting his pro-Brexit colleagues were wrong and that his modern, compassionate Conservative government had defended workers’ rights.
But Jezza would not let go; Patel and Gove wanted to reduce the “burden” as they saw it of workers’ rights.
Dave pointed out for once he and the chief comrade were in agreement; their unity should be celebrated.
Somewhat put out by the offer of Conservative solidarity, Jezza had another attempt at highlighting red-blue division on closing a loophole to exploit migrant workers. But Dave suggested, hold on, he agreed with it.
The Labour chief quickly moved to highlight a red-blue division on tax evasion, asking Dave to get Tory MEPs to support moves to crack down on tax avoidance. The PM insisted they had and would.
Jezza, somewhat frustrated by this blue on red amity, had another go of highlighting the Euro split in the Tory cabinet to which Dave shrugged his shoulders and protested: “Here I am trying to be so consensual; I’m doing my best.”
Then, just to underline the Tory divisions, as if Jezza had not done enough, one Brexit Conservative piped up to criticise the PM on Europe and urged him to “stop denigrating our country”.
Dave, nose slightly raised, swatted his colleague aside, going on to give a soliloquy about how he loved his country and did not want to do anything that could “lead to its break-up”.
What’s this? The Union card. Having said there would not be a second Scottish referendum, no ifs no buts, surely the PM was not now playing to the gallery on Scexit?
Solidarity was then urged on another front: the Euro 2016. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds raised some chuckles when he talked about how people from all parts of the UK would be travelling to the football tournament, “including Scotland I’m sure”; SNP MPs looked sheepish. “We welcome everybody,” he quipped.
Dave, looking towards the Nationalist benches, declared: "Come on. I'm going to be watching. Our first game is England-Russia and I'm going to be watching very carefully to check we get very strong support." Now that is stretching Scottish solidarity a bit far.
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