Chris Grayling’s defence of the Seaborne Freight contract was the most risible thing I have ever heard said in the House of Commons

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. On Tuesday lunchtime, Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, was called to the despatch box of the House of Commons to face questions about why he had awarded a £14m shipping contract to a company that does not own any ships, whose registered assets total £66, and whose terms and conditions of business turned out to have been copied and pasted from a takeaway delivery website. And as Labour’s Andy McDonald filleted, seasoned and served up the full horrors of the Seaborne Freight contract with a spectacular precision that can only be described as Salt Bae-esque, the transport secretary’s right eye socket danced like a dying fly on a halogen hob. Suddenly, there was Owen Paterson MP, rising to his feet to say: “I commend him for ‘showing we are serious’ about no deal.” Admittedly, this is a man who, while environment secretary, went on live television to blame the failure of a badger cull on the fact that “the badgers have moved the goalposts”, and who now regularly appears on the radio to tell the CEOs of multinational car manufacturers that Brexit will be great and it is he, not they, who knows how to run a car company. Shortly after this happened, the transport secretary would go on to claim that Labour’s doubts about whether a shipping company with no ships was the right choice for an emergency shipping contract was because “Labour hates small business”.