David Lammy’s last appearance at PMQs resembled a multi clown-car pile-up: both tragic and hilarious. Indeed, it was such a disaster that one wondered whether Lammy would ever be allowed near PMQs again. However, Sir Keir’s obvious contempt for being in the country even a second longer than he has to had got the better of him once more and, while he’s making sure that president Xi has the cleanest shoes of any despot, we were treated to another Lammy PMQs.
It was a pretty lame effort all round. Neither man really asked, nor answered questions
Opposite him was Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith, who unfortunately has the demeanour of a depressed mortgage broker. He also served in the Truss administration and so inevitably we got the same hoary nonsense from Lammy about how a government being bad in the past somehow means that a government now shouldn’t be criticised.
Wisely, Griffith asked about the economy. Next to Lammy sat Rachel Reeves, with her usual dead stare. She increasingly resembles a show corpse used by undertakers to demonstrate what wonders heavy makeup can do. Lammy clearly knew almost nothing about the economy and so chose to make inane segues into irrelevant topics, ranging from the state of his father’s business during the Thatcher government to the string of Tory defections to Reform.
Griffith regrettably rose to the bait which Lammy had laid out. ‘It’s our party that is getting stronger.’ ‘At last,’ came a cry from the Labour benches, ‘a funny joke’. Not much can make Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch look like Gladstone and Disraeli, but this came close.
In fairness Griffith did manage one gag; ‘It’s not the Prime Minister going to China that’s a problem but the fear that he might come back.’ One feels a degree of pity for whichever CCP operative will be listening in to the PM’s small talk. Perhaps they’ll think ‘My Father was a toolmaker’ is some sort of code phrase like ‘the Eagle has landed’ rather than an intensely irritating, chip-on-shoulder, stock phrase deployed when he has nothing else to say.
Griffith also made a joke about Labour MPs soon being banned from hairdressers; but this really was a case of two bald men fighting over a comb. The peril of the expected turquoise tidal wave lingered in the chamber, both deputies dancing round the extinction threat posed by Reform. It was a pretty lame effort all round. Neither man really asked, nor answered questions. Not a day likely to feature on a NOW That’s what I call PMQs! compilation CD.
Easily the best moment came from Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper, who gave a coruscating list of China’s crimes while pointing out that Sir Keir seemed more determined than ever to kowtow to the Chinese by giving them their almost parodically evil mega embassy-cum-torture shed. When even the Lib Dems are noticing your consistent undermining of national interest then you know something has gone very wrong indeed. In lieu of an answer, Lammy gave her a lecture about the coalition government.
We also heard from perma-toadying Rugby MP John Slinger, who praised ‘the good work of this Labour government’ before hopping back onto his lily-pad. Lee Anderson asked Lammy to go to the pub with him to see how landlords were suffering under Labour. One can imagine this turning into a successful podcast as Lammy and Lee go round the country having a pint and chatting politics. Imagine a more combative ‘The Rest is Politics’. Lammy, however, was not keen and had the audacity to make a joke about Anderson’s intelligence, which from someone who sometimes gives the impression that he would struggle to use a lift unaided shows some real gall. Inevitably, he didn’t answer the question at all, but instead bizarrely invoked Liz Truss again.
Lammy escaped this performance without the self-soiling embarrassment of his last effort; not that either really mean much outside Westminster’s bubble of Pygmy politicians and attendant lobby fodder. Still, if the Chinese were watching today’s offering by our governing elite – which let’s face it, they probably already are, through every device we own – they’ll realise they have even less to worry about than they thought.
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