Madeline Grant

Robert Jenrick arrived late to his own defection. ‘It’s time for the truth,’ he said, before launching into a speech that he would have no doubt preferred to deliver at a more opportune moment. In Nigel Farage’s opening remarks, which he had to pad out as Jenrick failed to arrive at the lectern, he implied that his new recruit had only been pushed into jumping by the actions of an over-hasty Kemi Badenoch. He described her sacking of Jenrick as an avoidable own goal, ‘the latest Christmas present I’ve ever had’. In reality, Jenrick could scarcely have been allowed to stay on after senior Reform UK figures had publicly admitted to being in secret discussions with him. The more important question is, what does it mean for both parties of the Right?

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.

‘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.

You may recall the cancellation of the Maccabi Tel Aviv-Aston Villa game back in November. What has happened since is that, due to constant scrutiny by Nick Timothy MP, Lord Austin and a small number of journalists, the narrative that West Midlands police spun at the time – that the Israeli fans were too dangerous to host – has slowly been unravelling. The force stands accused of retroactively cobbling together evidence for a ban that was actually rooted in fears about sectarian violence in Birmingham; ‘elements’ of the local community reportedly wished to ‘arm themselves‘ and target visiting fans. So far, so reassuring.

I’ve just come back from a short holiday in Venice. The city is an unsurpassable monument to the glories of the Renaissance, but its streets and waterways also bear witness to the absolute non-existence of 'international rules'. When confronted by Bonaparte's expansionist aims in 1797, the millennium-old Venetian republic responded as it had always done, relying on diplomatic assumptions maintained for centuries. Meanwhile Napoleon, promising to be 'an Attila to the state of Venice', simply invaded, bringing the Serene Republic to an ignominious end. Venetian art and treasures were plundered to fund the French war effort. In a particular humiliation for the city-state, Bonaparte began filling in the canals to resemble Parisian boulevards.

Thank God! Today was the last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas and so Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch began their speeches with seasonal greetings. Was a Christmas truce about to break out? Unlikely; Sir Keir couldn't resist a poke at Reform’s Russian problems. ‘If wise men from the East come bearing gifts, this time report it to the police’ he scoffed. Today, Nigel Farage, Sir Keir's very own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, loomed down on proceedings from the Commons viewing gallery. Even he chuckled at this opening gag.

The liaison committee is always a laugh. It’s sort of like a year in review for the government’s litany of failures. Like an advent calendar but behind each door there’s a little puddle of cat sick. The specific aim of this particular roundup was ‘the work of the Prime Minister’, and so as a festive treat our very own pig in a blanket was dragged in for an extra big Christmas helping of his least favourite thing in the world – scrutiny. First up was Alberto Costa, appropriately the chair of the Standards Committee, which during this parliament must be like being the person whose job it was to keep the deck dry on the Titanic. Mr.

Benjamin Disraeli once observed that the difference between a misfortune and a calamity was that if Mr Gladstone fell in the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out it would be a calamity. As the government moves indisputably from being victims of misfortune to being agents of calamity, so we might recycle the quip about Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister today entered his ‘not waving but drowning’ era. And he is, to use the sort of girlboss gibbering signalling which his MPs routinely resort to, slaying it. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, deliciously, one of his worst yet.

‘Nurse! Nurse! He’s out again!’ That’s right, Sir Keir had escaped his handlers and was mingling with the public once more. This time he was ruining the coffee break of some workers at McLaren to talk about apprenticeships. Presumably he takes any opportunity he can to avoid the company of his own MPs at the moment, morale being about the same as it was on HMS Bounty a minute or two before the mutiny. Sir Keir was introduced by Pat McFadden, the cadaverous figure whom Labour trot out when things are going particularly badly. It was like having Nosferatu as your warm-up act. Yet even with this inauspicious intro, Sir Keir still managed to look like the weirder one of the pair.