Madeline Grant

It’s amazing how far a prime minister can get just by not being Keir Starmer. There’s considerable political success to be had in simply reversing his stupidest policies, from digital ID to scrapping jury trials, and today, for now at least – assisted suicide – which Mr Burnham announced he wouldn’t be taking forward until social care is in better shape.  The most kamikaze-shaped policy of the Starmer government, the Chagos surrender, still technically remains on the books. Whether Burnham will have the balls or nous to do a full-scale scrapping of his predecessor’s deranged programme remains to be seen.  Burnham is helped by the contrast in his tone – Starmer invariably sounded like an impatient undertaker when announcing policy.

Big Ange is back. From a sketchwriter’s point of view I have to say that this is marvellous news. Rayner is actually an exceptionally old-fashioned politician. She’s akin to the union barons of the past, or perhaps even more accurately, to the Democrat mob bosses who ran Chicago or New York from the middle of the 19th century. I can picture her turning No. 10 North into a sort of Tammany Hall operation where she dishes out service contracts to choice clients with gay abandon.  Rayner’s way of conducting herself might echo the ‘beer and sandwiches’ sleaze of the past, but it has a more grating side.

The Liberal Democrat party of Russia and the Liberal Democrat party of the United Kingdom are not, on the face of it, natural bedfellows. Google declares that the latter’s main policies are ‘healthcare reform, the replacement of Ofwat and closer integration with Europe’. The former’s main policies are the shooting of political opponents, the deportation of all Chechens and something they ominously term ‘imperial reconquest’. However, as unlikely as it may seem, they are not without their similarities. Both have been accused – not without some justification – of being neither liberal nor democratic.

A brass fanfare; a wide establishing shot of five men in three-piece suits, seated in a library of leather-bound tomes – this is Harold Macmillan doing informal. The scene is from a 1959 party political broadcast, which purports to show a ‘relaxed chat’ between Macmillan and four of his ministers, all of whom he refers to by their cabinet titles. Almost everything about it is artificial (including quite possibly the claim that it took place the day after the parliamentary recess). Watching it now is a reminder of two things, perhaps contradictory. First, that prime ministers have always played a clever and not entirely authentic game when it comes to informality; second, how far we’ve fallen. Can you imagine the equivalent today?

As coronations go, this was a particularly flat one. Instead of Zadok the Priest we were treated to New Order. To nobody’s surprise Andy Burnham was unveiled this afternoon as Leader of the Labour party to a select audience of lanyard-wearing goons, cronies and Neil Kinnock.  First we were subjected to Lucy Powell, who had the distinction of being sacked by Keir Starmer for being too incompetent. In a cabinet which includes Rachel Reeves that’s no mean feat. ‘It’s kinda non-uniform day,’ babbled Powell, who is astonishingly the Deputy Leader of the governing party of a G7 power and not Deputy Idiot of a village somewhere. The Russians and the Chinese must be crapping themselves.

‘You’ll miss him when he’s gone!’ Lots of people have said this to me. It’s true I have had the dubious privilege of sketching Sir Keir Starmer for almost the whole of his career as leader of the opposition and Prime Minister. He has grown to be a constant feature of my life, a sort of perma-presence in the background, the person round which my week necessarily has to gravitate. And now, the moment for his departure has finally arrived: today was the final PMQs for Sir Keir Rodney Starmer. It was the final gentle squeal of that good Knight. Starmergeddon. Good afternoon, good evening and Meep Meep.

Sir Keir Starmer was away this week. Nothing new there of course; indeed, it seems the thing which will change least when he finally leaves No 10 will be his presence in Parliament. So today we had what might well be David Lammy’s final outing as Deputy Prime Minister. The Tories had done their customary rummage down the back of the sofa for someone to face him and pulled out James Cleverly. With attention diverted away from the party leaders, these are always good occasions for Members of the House of Commons to demonstrate just how crashingly unimpressive many of them are. Today’s offering was a veritable casserole of mediocrity.  Lammy and Cleverly were unimpressive themselves, clattering at each other in lumbering fight about early release of prisoners.

He probably won’t want to hear this but there is an air of General De Gaulle about Nigel Farage. De Gaulle came to define French politics through a mix of deliberate play-acting as being anti-establishment, a narrative of his own sacrifice and a series of exceptionally well-coordinated tantrums. Now, if that doesn’t sound familiar, I don’t know what does. Nobody could ever accuse Mr Farage of being under-dramatic Farage possibly hoped today was a ‘De Gaulle’s style moment. As the General was wont to do, Farage decided to circumnavigate the official investigations and the media and instead to broadcast directly to the general public.

‘What’s Big Ange up to?’ was a question Sir Keir Starmer had to ask himself basically every day of his premiership. The fact that the bigger threat came from a totally different Mancunian doesn’t mean that tracking Ange’s manoeuvres was a bad idea. Inevitably, having helped defenestrate her former boss, she’s now angling to work out the next job she’s going to be sacked from. In aid of this, she’d taken to the airwaves, standing in for the cursed James O’Brien slot on LBC.  This was Big Ange’s sunshine radio roadshow – it being her stated aim to be ‘really optimistic’, to shine a light on some ‘good news stories’ (for which read: policies she’d come up with). This was not an even-handed radio session.

The Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by wishing a ‘happy 78th birthday’ to the NHS. This is the sort of weird, abstract and inanimate thing he is comfortable showing affection for. What next? Happy Birthday to the Nuclear Deterrent, to the Protestant Succession? How will everyone be celebrating? Being left on a trolley for 48 hours? Perhaps by the time the NHS has turned 80, you’ll be able to get an appointment.  He has essentially painted a Burnham shaped tunnel on the side of a sheer rock face, failing to commit the requisite money to defence Next came a bit of – unexpected – mutual congratulation, courtesy of Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch.

There are still people out there – with access to the full gamut of unblunted cutlery – who maintain that Sir Keir Starmer is one of the great public servants of our time, cruelly brought down by unfair events. One easy way to disprove this, in the unlikely event that this theory’s proponents are susceptible to appeals to reason, is by pointing to his government’s defence record. The person who was in charge of this department, John Healey, resigned rather than be held responsible for the total abandonment of the nation’s defences.  One of these Starmer defenders is Rachel Reeves. Or at least she is one of them now that it’s become clear Burnham will sack her as quickly as you can say ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.

‘What a fitting venue to be sat in – The People’s History Museum’. So began the introduction to Andy Burnham’s great descent from Mount Sinai to declare his programme for government. It was delivered by Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate to replace him as Manchester mayor. She delivered it in a tone and nasal burr which suggested she was announcing that a rail replacement bus service had been delayed.  His promise of ‘a new era of possibility’ was a lot of style – mingled with some inevitable Burnhamite sentimentalism: ‘hope in every heart and good growth in every postcode.’ It made me long for a gun in every hand and a cyanide capsule in every drawer  However, she was right – it was a fitting venue!

Parliament always has an otherworldly feel; it’s a world of gothic crenelations, of specialised language, of deliberate artifice. But something even less real has crept in recently. A deliberate indulgence by the governing class of mawkishness and sentimentality, just as the reality of the country they’re supposed to be governing turns grimmer and more violent. The two – the rise of violence and the dominance of mawkishness – are not unrelated.  Scarcely a week goes by without a minister hailing a victim or relative in the viewing gallery – sometimes for manifestly self-interested reasons We are entering day two of the fallout from Kemi Badenoch accusing Bridget Phillipson of being a ‘spiteful class warrior’ at PMQs.

The end of Sir Keir’s premiership, and especially his last few PMQs, was always going to be less of a swansong and more a prolonged squeal. The Prime Minister makes no secret of his hatred of even being in parliament, let alone answering questions there – if ‘answering’ is the right word for the mix of slogans, bluff and anger which make up his Wednesday lunchtime offerings. Who knows when his last will be, but it now won’t be long. I suspect he will not miss it. One person who will probably miss him is the Leader of the Opposition. There was a touch of sadness in Kemi Badenoch’s voice as she realised this would be one of her final skewerings of the Oinking One.