Another week, another U-turn! This time the PM had chosen to make Prime Minister’s Questions even more torturous for himself by beating an ignominious retreat on the issue of compulsory digital ID. The climb-down was inevitable. The government has totalitarian aspirations that would make Brezhnev blush, but is sadly fated to be run by people for whom the ‘Do Not Eat’ instructions on Playdoh are designed.
The gap between Labour’s authoritarian instincts and its actual abilities has enormous comic potential. Indeed I’m sure that in time Sir Keir will be considered to have added greatly to the gaiety of nations: just not the one that has to suffer him as its prime minister.
Presumably the government just hopes people won’t notice their attempts at rule by legislative sadomasochism. Alas not. Certainly Mrs Badenoch had noticed. ‘Can I welcome the Prime Minister’s latest U-turn’ she purred. ‘I feel like I say that every week’. She seized on the Health Secretary’s reported comments that Sir Keir’s New Year’s resolution should be ‘to get it right first time’. Sir Keir was not pleased at this. Presumably saying ‘Wes Streeting’ in his presence is akin to saying ‘Macbeth’ backstage at the RSC.
The PM did his standard repeat statements of all the wonderful things the government was doing, delivered, as always, in the tone of an automated checkout machine which had been possessed by the spirit of a traffic warden. He finished off with what a spotty Spad had presumably convinced him was a joke. ‘They had more positions in 14 years than the Karma Sutra. No wonder they’re knackered – and they left the country screwed.’ It’s to be welcomed that Sir Keir has had a sense of humour transplant, it’s just a shame that the only donor they could find was a creepy uncle from 1978.
More ‘jokes’ from Sir Keir included a random invocation of Nadhim Zahawi during an answer about NHS waiting lists. ‘Please don’t tell me she listened to his accountant,’ he jeered, expecting a laugh. Next to him David Lammy looked around blankly, though in fairness to the PM, this may not have been related to anything going on around him.
Perhaps the lamest effort was his claim that he had been to Ikea where they now sold ‘the shadow cabinet; no one wants to buy it, it’s made of dead wood and every time it loses a nut it defects to Reform.’ The Prime Minister is already hampered by his intonation problem, he delivers jokes like he’s a police liaison officer imparting the news of a tragic school bus accident, but the content is if anything worse. Who is writing these jokes? They sound like they were composed by an alien which has learned how the rhythm of a joke should work but not the content. They may as well be written by gravel. Indeed they are so bad that there is actually a genuine chance they’re written by the Prime Minister himself.
In response to these appalling similitudes of jokes, even the usually easily pleased Labour MPs were muted: they are sick of being marched up to the top of the hill only to be marched humiliatingly back down again. They’re also probably aware that Sir Keir is threatening to be less popular than the actual (or rather former) Duke of York. ‘Week after week they have to defend the indefensible,’ jabbed Mrs Badenoch. The parade of gloom behind Sir Keir suggests they know she’s right.
He somehow turned every answer into a rant about Reform, Russian influence and Elon Musk
Most of the rest of the session was spent with Sir Keir trying to score points off the people he’s really scared of – Reform. We were treated to not one but two pearl-clutching rants about the AI scare. Labour backbencher Emily Darlington, despite reading her entire question from a sheet of paper, still managed to ask the PM if he would ‘commit to enforcing the abuse of women and girls’. One can see why some of these people are so scared about being replaced by advancing technology.
With both of these, as well as a bottom-crawling question about ‘always standing up for British interests’ from one of the myriad backbench non-entities and a more pertinent Tory one about the great Chagos betrayal, Sir Keir somehow turned every answer into a prolonged conspiratorial rant about Reform, Russian influence and Elon Musk. He really should spend less time online.
The PM was less willing to give extensive answers to three more difficult questions: on the influence of Islamism by Nick Timothy (though a squawk of ‘that’s racist!’ emanated from the direction of Emily Thornberry), on delays to leasehold reform by Florence Eshalomi and on the cancellation of elections by Ben Obese-Jecty, he barely deigned to give a sentence each in reply. There is one merciful aspect to the Prime Minister’s passion for monosyllabic answers to difficult questions: it doesn’t leave room for any of his ‘jokes’.
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