The liaison committee is always a laugh. It’s sort of like a year in review for the government’s litany of failures. Like an advent calendar but behind each door there’s a little puddle of cat sick. The specific aim of this particular roundup was ‘the work of the Prime Minister’, and so as a festive treat our very own pig in a blanket was dragged in for an extra big Christmas helping of his least favourite thing in the world – scrutiny.
First up was Alberto Costa, appropriately the chair of the Standards Committee, which during this parliament must be like being the person whose job it was to keep the deck dry on the Titanic. Mr. Costa made sure to ask him very slowly and deliberately if he understood specific parts of the ministerial code, as if he were asking a toddler whether they were absolutely sure that they could go to the toilet on their own. This was a perfect hoisting of the PM, being exactly the sort of ‘letter not spirit’ legalism which he spent most of his career doing. The PM assented with a sort of worried, constipated nod.
Mr. Costa began with one of the PM’s social media posts about bus fare caps, which appeared to take credit for a Tory policy. It might seem small in the scheme of things, but lest we forget, they got Al Capone for his tax return. It’s also indicative of the PM’s general attitude to the truth: i.e. it’s always dispensable if it serves the purposes of what he believes to be right in the long run. He then moved on from buses to the verisimilitude of Sir Keir’s statements in the House and the sources of leaks and speculation in his government. All of it painted a picture of a generationally dishonest politician; the Pinocchio of Kentish Town.
Nothing matters at all to Starmer other than getting his own way
Cat Smith, one of his own MPs, brought up the family farm raid. She begged him to change his mind in light of reports of elderly farmers planning to kill themselves to avoid the government’s deranged spite tax.
‘You are a prime minister who has been admirably willing to change course,’ she said, which is an understatement, like saying Mr Blobby was ‘admirably willing to confront obstacles in his way’. Starmer declined to do so. In response to whether he knew or cared about the potential for people to kill themselves, he said, ‘I have had discussions with a number of individuals who have drawn all manner of things to my attention.’ Truly, there are bin liners with more obvious human empathy than this man.
Smith was not alone in grilling the PM on this vindictive policy. As is often the case, one of the stars of the show was Alistair Carmichael, that rarest of creatures – a Lib Dem Big Beast. Mr Carmichael brings the Calvinistic candour of Orkney and Shetland to his role as chairman of the Rural Affairs Select Committee. He asked a series of coruscating questions about whether this was actually what it appeared to be – a targeted bit of spite against farmers which will raise no money at all. Starmer did his usual fleshy clucking about ‘sensible reforms’. He looked like an uncooked chipolata as he did so.
Mr. Carmichael reiterated Cat Smith’s question about whether it was a commendable state of affairs that some farmers felt they might be better off dead. ‘No, of course not,’ replied the PM. ‘But governments have to bring about sensible reform.’ There’s the whiff of Robespierre about such psychotic dismissals of human life in favour of ‘progress’. Of course, there are differences between the two. One’s a widely despised lawyer who managed to screw up his country in a couple of years before inevitably being betrayed by his own colleagues, and the other is Maximilien Robespierre.
Mr. Carmichael was angry and not finished. He pointed out that Starmer was unlikely to listen to him or to farmers but asked why, given that several committees with Labour majorities had unanimously asked for reconsiderations of the Bill, ‘do you not listen to your own party colleagues?’
‘I do listen to party colleagues all the time.’ The Prime Minister delivered this line with sullen insistence, as if he was telling people that he did have a girlfriend, but she went to another school. Carmichael snapped back: ‘And then you do what you’re going to do anyway.’
That’s the crux of it: nothing matters at all to Starmer other than getting his own way. For every criticism, you can imagine him making a mental note to push even harder against those who oppose him; whether it’s assisted suicide, the House of Lords, farmers or the Chagos, for every insane or wicked policy he has, the more people try to point out the obvious flaws in them, the more determined he is to ram them down the public’s throat. It might be a delight to watch Starmer getting a roasting but one gets the unpleasant sense that he rather enjoys it.
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