‘New year, new you’. One can imagine the Prime Minister repeating this most hollow of secular mantras in front of a full length mirror in Downing Street. As the embodiment of vapid and valueless 21st century Britain, the PM probably loves New Year’s resolutions. He is the walking embodiment of Dry January after all.
Yet, if he did vow to turn over a new leaf as the calendars changed there was little evidence of it at the first Prime Minister’s Questions since the recess. Mrs Badenoch focussed on two areas, not unrelated: foreign policy and the PM’s constant refusal to be scrutinised about it or any other matter. Specifically, she asked why, having committed British troops to Ukraine in a Coalition of the Willing meeting, he hadn’t bothered to make a statement to the House, something even Tony Blair – who was not unenthusiastic about boots on the ground – would have done.
Starmer simply proved her point by more obfuscation: ‘I will make a statement to the House at the earliest opportunity.’ The cry understandably came back: ‘why not now?’ Perhaps Starmer, just as he clearly has his own definition of truth, has his own experience of time as well. Maybe he exists in some post-Heideggerian mode of being that has freed itself from time’s prison? Maybe he is a quantum exception to the theory of relativity? Or maybe he was just lying, again.
Even Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who sometimes strays into chocolate teapot territory in his umpiring of PMQs, lost his rag with the PM, who tried to make a subsequent answer to a question on Greenland about Mrs Badenoch’s question choices. ‘Can I just help the Prime Minister? You don’t need to worry about the responsibility of the questions of the opposition, that’s their job.’
The exchange got testier. Mrs Badenoch brought up the litany of ways that the government is failing in its most basic duty of the defence of the realm; from committing bags of swag to welfare rather than defence, to the prosecution of veterans. Sir Keir decided to bring up the shadow attorney general, who has done work for Roman Abramovich. This was a bold move given that the actual Attorney General should probably be in the Tower of London for spending his entire career working against the national interest and surrendering the Chagos Islands.
The subject of lawyers is obviously one close to The Prime Minister’s heart. He went the puce-grey colour that indicates anger as he defended the cab rank principle. Either side of him sat a motionless Reeves and Cooper, like a pair of heavily decomposed Peruvian ice mummies. ‘This is the year we turn a corner!’ yelled Sir Keir. Yes, into retirement, if the polls are to be believed.
There was frostiness for Sir Keir from directions other than the Tories. Even Sir Ed Davey, who usually asks lamentable client questions of the Prime Minister, backed the push for more defence spending. Perhaps this is the year when the Lib Dems make a resolution to act like a proper party of opposition rather than sucking up to the Government in exchange for a few peerages. There was also a question from Sir Keir’s most visibly disliked category of MP: a Labour woman who doesn’t agree with him. Specifically, Rachel Maskell, whose relationship with the Prime Minister is at Svalbardian temperatures on a good day, asked a blistering question on the insanity of business rate rises. What she got back was a patronising bloviation from a man who hates being shown up for what he is. ‘We’re speaking to the sector!’ he snapped in a seconds-long dismissal.
There was the usual bottom-crawling question
A question on suicide prevention from Sarah Olney brought the usual empty promises from the PM to ‘do more’. Up in the viewing gallery sat the Grim Leadreaper, whose euthanasia bill – supported by Sir Keir – is being given a well-deserved duffing by the House of Lords. Again, there was no indication that the new year has brought anyone on that side of the House a sense of irony.
There was the usual bottom-crawling question. A visibly pointless backbencher stood up and made what he presumably thought was a latter-day St Crispin’s Day speech on chickenpox vaccines and R’NHS. It was telling that even the toadies around him looked bored of these weekly debasements; perhaps because they’ve finally realised that the PM doesn’t actually value them and doubtless has several more humiliating climbdowns and U-turns in store for them this year. Indeed, perhaps that’s a better – or at least more accurate – motto for Sir Keir to practice in front of his mirror: new year, new U-turns.
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