Lloyd Evans

Throwing money away. That was the big topic at PMQs today. Rishi Sunak has flown to Washington for talks with Joe Biden, (which is probably the President’s only scheduled appointment this month.) The deputies slugged it out in the Commons. Angela Rayner brought up an admission by the Public Accounts Committee that a fortune in tax-payers’ money has flown out of the window. A total of £21 billion is missing, presumed stolen. Rishi’s understudy, Oliver Dowden, claimed that things weren’t that bad because a quarter of the lost money would be found. ‘We’re working tirelessly to recover those funds,’ he said. Tirelessly? He sound like a bored rescue-worker tackling a house-fire with a water-pistol. Here’s the bottom-line. The Tories have waved bye-bye to £15.

London is killing us. That’s the conclusion of Sadiq Khan’s alarming new book, Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency, which he publicised last night at a 90-minute event held in the Royal Festival Hall.   The sales pitch for Khan’s book was disturbed by hecklers and protestors who blew whistles and shouted constant abuse at the mayor. ‘F*** off, Joseph Goebbels, you c***,’ was a typical insult.   Khan ignored the protests as he introduced himself at the podium and read out a page from his book. He seems perfectly accustomed to being screamed at in public by the electorate.

Strange tactics by Sir Keir at PMQs. He raised the issue of broken promises on immigration, which gave Rishi Sunak a chance to sound tougher than Labour. ‘How many work visas were issued to foreign nationals last year?’ asked Sir Keir. Rishi dodged the question and blamed the unexpectedly large influx on the Ukraine war. And he mentioned his personal and very generous decision to welcome refugees into other people’s houses. Sir Keir supplied the figure Rishi had just ducked: ‘It’s 250,000. He knows the answer. He just doesn’t want to give it.’ Rishi seized his chance to accuse Labour of plotting to scrap our borders altogether. ‘He believes in an open-door immigration policy,’ he said.

The party leaders were absent today so the understudies stepped in. Angela Rayner filled the vacuum that is Sir Keir Starmer, while Oliver Dowden performed for Rishi Sunak. Rayner had prepared for the encounter by spending the entire morning in hair and make-up. Result, a sharp off-white jacket and matching slacks. And her famous ginger locks spilled out luxuriously over her padded shoulders. An eye-catching display, certainly, but perhaps not the right wardrobe for the deputy leader of the people’s party. She looked like a Miami sales assistant who flogs yachts to billionaires. She was gracious in welcoming Dowden to the despatch box and joked that he was the ‘third deputy prime minister I’ve faced in three years.’ And she took a swipe at Rishi’s public school background.

Sir Keir’s gag-writers were on good form at PMQs. Last week, the Tories lowered expectations by predicting a loss of 1,000 seats at the local election. And this worst-case scenario came true. ‘At last,’ crowed Sir Keir, ‘a Tory promise they haven’t actually broken.’ He also took aim at Rishi’s democratic illegitimacy. In last year’s leadership contest, Rishi lost to Liz Truss who was then outlasted by a lettuce. ‘He entered a two-horse race and somehow managed to come third,’ said Sir Keir. Labour’s backbenchers roared at this like bison feasting in fresh green pasture. They can smell power in the air, and the breeze is moving their way.

Powerful stuff from Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. He tackled Rishi Sunak on his favourite battleground – statistics. He began by pinning the PM down on a very specific question. How many mortgage-holders have to pay more each month because the Tories ‘crashed the economy last autumn’? Rishi didn’t know. Sir Keir gave him the answer and promptly gloated over the PM’s failure to reply. Next he asked how many future mortgage-holders will enter the trap of rising payments. No reply from Rishi. He simply didn’t know. Bad look.  Sir Keir has wisely shifted the focus of his attacks. Rather than complaining about Mrs Sunak’s bank balance – which feels ungallant – he brought up the family swimming pool which, he claimed, costs £9,000 a year to heat.

Grievance fever gripped the house at Prime Minister's Questions. The grudge-mongers were out in force. Sir Keir Starmer led the charge and asked Rishi Sunak why he refused to scrap non-dom status. The Labour leader answered his own question by explaining that the tax exemption enriches Rishi’s ‘family’. (By ‘family’ he meant ‘wife’, of course, and the encryption helped him dodge the charge that he’s turning Mrs Sunak into a public hate-figure – which is exactly what he’s doing.) Sir Keir expects us to envy and loathe the Sunaks for being successful Sir Keir expects us to envy and loathe the Sunaks for being successful. But a lot of people loathe anyone who loathes success. Perhaps Sir Keir should enlarge his social circle.

Rishi Sunak missed PMQs to attend Betty Boothroyd’s funeral and a half-empty chamber watched the deputies, Dominic Raab and Angela Rayner, slug it out. Rayner, always a crowd-pleaser, began by hailing the late Paul O’Grady as ‘a true northern star.’ And she had fun with the new crackdown on street thuggery or ‘anti-social behaviour’ as our genteel government puts it. Rayner linked this to the Dominic ‘Raabspierre’ allegations made by a handful of snowflake civil servants who felt that the Justice Secretary had mistreated them. It was good knockabout stuff. Rayner suggested that Raab had personal knowledge of louts ‘exploding in fits of rage and creating a culture of fear, and maybe even, I don’t know, throwing things?’ Raab guessed this was coming.