Lloyd Evans

Robots will never replace Sir Keir Starmer. No need. Silicon Valley is already using him as the template for an army of cloned officials to be sold worldwide. The Starmer App was on display at PMQs as he answered planted questions at the start of the session. A tame backbencher said the word ‘train station.’ ‘We’re taking railway services back into public ownership,’ parroted Sir Keir, ‘and making ticketing better and fairer.’ A second MP said ‘teachers.’ ‘Skilling up the next generation is vital to economic growth,’ came the auto-reply. Up stood the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, and she had targets aplenty to choose from. The government is reeling.

Finally, we heard it. At PMQs today, the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, dropped the euphemism ‘grooming’ and said ‘rape gangs’ to describe the networks of predominantly Muslim men who prey on underage girls. Sir Keir tried to defuse the issue in his opening comments by dismissing calls for a national enquiry. ‘The Jay inquiry… [took] seven years, which would take us with a further inquiry to 2031,’ he said. (Perhaps he meant 2032.) He knows why a new inquiry would take years just to get started. Every cop and local councillor, fearing prison, would lawyer-up at public expense to minimise their culpability. As for the issue of rape gangs, it’s here to stay But he blamed the victims for creating these obstacles.

Kemi Badenoch got tough with Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. Not tough enough, but at least she led on a decent issue: old folks in distress. She mentioned the Waspi women and then she changed tack, to wrong foot Sir Kier, and threw him a short but specific question. How many new applications for pension credit have been received since the winter fuel allowance was cut in the budget?  Kemi was better today but she lacks bite Sir Keir didn’t know. So he evoked the black hole to get him out of trouble. ‘We had to put the finances back in order,’ he cried. Kemi gave Sir Keir the information he didn’t have. Pension credit is owed to 850,000 citizens who haven’t claimed it. ‘If they sign up that will cost £2.

Flunked it again, unfortunately. Kemi Badenoch chose poor tactics at PMQs. She made flabby speeches instead of hitting the PM with short, sharp questions.  She led on immigration – one of the Tories’ weakest topics. Sir Keir Starmer immediately mentioned the ‘open border’ policies that allowed nearly a million migrants to arrive in a single year. Kemi got specific. She said Sir Keir had opposed deportations for foreign-born criminals. One of these convicts went on to commit homicide. ‘He was able to stay here and murder because people like this man campaigned against deporting criminals. Will he apologise for signing these letters?’ A tough question but Sir Keir pulled off a sneaky shimmy. He blamed the Tories.

Labour thinks it can win on immigration. Their new strategy was road-tested today at PMQs as backbencher Olivia Bailey opened the session saluting Keir Starmer’s gang-busting policies. ‘Internationalist co-operation, shared intelligence and joint law enforcement,’ said Bailey, ‘are the best way to end the vile people-smuggling trade.’   Starmer rose to agree with his stooge. ‘The broken immigration system’ of the Tories is being fixed, he said, and 9,400 people ‘who have no right to be here’ are being rounded up and sent packing. ‘We got the flights off the ground,’ he boasted. This blew Kemi Badenoch off course. She wanted to talk about Louise Haigh, the ex-transport minister.

Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated. ‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming. She boasted that Starmer had made an embarrassing admission by failing to endorse Reeves’s pledge. Well, sort of.

It was deputies’ day at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer is busy flying around the world yet again. This time he’s trying to charm the unlucky leaders of the G20. Angela Rayner took his place at PMQs opposite Alex Burghart for the Tories. His opener was terse and effective.  ‘What is the government doing to bring down inflation?’  Rayner was prepared. She reminded him that he was the ‘growth minister’ under Liz Truss when inflation soared to 11 per cent. Fair point. Burghart quoted the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast that Rachel Reeve’s smash-and-grab budget will lift inflation to three per cent. Rayner drawled out an identical reply and suggested that three percent is preferable to 11 per cent.

Cold drizzle falling on tweed. That was the abiding image of today’s protest in Westminster which filled Whitehall with tens of thousands of indignant farmers. Just two tractors were admitted. One was parked outside Downing Street and the other stood by the women’s war memorial. Groups of farmers clambered onto the metal flanks and took snaps of themselves. Many held home-made placards denouncing ‘farmer harmer’ Starmer and ‘Rachel Thieves’, the chancellor. Some of the more paranoid demonstrators saw Labour as a historic threat to the working class. Everyone seemed obdurately upbeat despite the freezing rain ‘First the miners, then the farmers, next it’s you.’ The simplest signs appealed to common sense. ‘No farmers, no food, no future.

PMQs under Sir Keir’s premiership is less entertaining and volatile than before. Blame the landslide. A huge government majority fills the backbenches with half-witted placemen and wonks who have no experience of public speaking. They can’t command the attention of a large crowd. They don’t look the audience in the eye. And they fail to use their voices at full volume. Instead, they hunch like scared beginners over scripted crib-sheets handed to them by the whips. Can none of these talentless hacks memorise a few short sentences? It’s embarrassing. Sir Keir was in control. Kemi was at sea And Labour’s inept gang of newcomers will never hold Sir Keir to account because they lack any spark of individuality. PMQs is like a church-hall Bible class.