PMQs last week was embarrassing: not a single answer to a single question. The bar then was low – yet still today was, if not just as bad, still incredibly unimpressive. Mrs Badenoch began by asking a very simple question about new drilling in the North Sea. Sir Keir claimed that this was not his responsibility, but the responsibility of the secretary of state, meaning – as many suspect – that Ed Miliband has more control over the levers of power than his boss.
‘He’s the prime minister!’ bellowed Mrs Badenoch. Opposite her, Sir Keir put his head in his hands, thus ironically mimicking exactly how most people feel when they see him. The argument about North Sea oil and gas continued. Sir Keir insisted he couldn’t act due to the magic spells of legalism. Someone really should tell him who is in charge of making new laws…
‘The legislation, the statute’, he oinked, like a porcine thesaurus, before settling on the word he wanted. ‘The law prescribes the decision maker’, yelled Sir Keir. Herein lies his biggest problem- the Prime Minister believes that THE LAW is some sort of infallible pagan totem to which sacrificial ‘process’ must be made. Everything must become subservient to said totem, even the prime minister. It’s a sort of mad, shamanistic superstition that is increasingly rendering him incapable of actual decision-making.
Perhaps the second most embarrassing part of the session came at the end of Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch’s duel; he had clearly got his MPs to chant ‘WRONG’ whenever he mentioned one of her decisions, however like everything the Labour party does, the organisation was sub-par at best. The effect was clearly meant to be like Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound – instead it sounded like a community choir rehearsal for HMS Pinafore.
Easily the most embarrassing moment came when Ed Davey stood up. The leader of the Liberal Democrats decided that he would use his questions – which, given how allergic to accountability this government is, are precious commodities – to initiate a love-in with Starmer which had numerous MPs reaching for the sick bags. It was less like the House of Commons and more like the initial script read-through of Brokeback Mountain. Such brown-nosing has been noticeable for a while, but this was perhaps the most erotically charged we have seen it.
Some readers might question the wisdom of Davey so blatantly allying his party with a prime minister who remains about as popular among the general public as a diagnosis of tertiary syphilis. Still, Davey licked his lips, and ploughed on, in the manner of a playground snitch. ‘As a former secretary of state for energy, the Prime Minister is right.’ ‘Stop sucking up!’ yelled Kemi Badenoch. For a man keen to stress his record in government – perhaps in hope of a job in some sort of nightmare rainbow coalition – it’s fascinating that Davey never mentions his time as postmaster general when all those innocent people were prosecuted. Memory eh!?
Douglas Alexander and Jo Stevens convulsed with performative laughter
Sir Keir has an astonishing tendency to tag completely unrelated topics to his answers. His is a sort of malign, distracting Dadaism, where at the end of the answer it’s impossible to work out where the question began. We saw this as Nigel Farage asked a question about small boats and, inevitably, received a lecture about council tax. At this, the Reform MPs stood up and walked out of the Chamber – though ex-Tories Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick were a little slow off the mark.
Unfortunately, this collective flounce clashed with a question from Marie Tidball about the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, which enabled Starmer, looking even more self-satisfied than usual, to quip that Farage had been ‘snookered.’ Worse even than the lame gag was the reaction of Labour’s more ambitious underlings. On the frontbench, Douglas Alexander and Jo Stevens convulsed with performative laughter, as if they were in the presence of comic greatness. It was excruciating.
The fact that parliament will break up for recess is a double-edged sword; on one hand it gives those of us obliged to go through the inanity of it all a break, on the other it might give Sir Keir inspiration for even worse jokes.
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