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. Each planted question prompts a robotic reply from Sir Keir followed by surge of orchestrated uproar from the honking donkeys.
Kemi Badenoch tried to cut a path through the blandness. Sir Keir pre-empted her by answering a backbench question about the £600 million offered to local authorities to cover social care. He also raised the subject of the minimum wage, which Labour has increased.
‘He can plant as many question as he likes,’ Badenoch countered. ‘I’m the one he has to face at the despatch box.’ She attacked Rachel Reeves, ‘the cut-and-paste Chancellor,’ and predicted that the employers’ National Insurance hike will lead to council tax rises. Sir Keir denied it.
Kemi had a figure of £2.4 billion in missing funds up her sleeve but by failing to mention it early she allowed Sir Keir to wrong-foot her. He suggested that she was asking about the £600 million which he’d just quoted. Did she not hear? Was she not listening? ‘A fundamental error,’ he called it. And that’s how it looked. Sir Keir was in control. Kemi was at sea. And she misspoke by accident, saying ‘experience’ when she meant ‘expensive’. By the time she got to the £2.4 billion it was too late.
Sir Keir then put her on the spot by asking her if she supports more spending on schools, housing and healthcare. ‘I’m not against any of those things,’ said Kemi. ‘None of us are against any of those things.’
Starmer pretended to be baffled. ‘She doesn’t want the measures in the budget but she wants all the benefits. The magic money tree is back.’ Bad move by Kemi. She’s handed a box of ammo to her enemies that may never run out.
Sir Ed Davey faces a terrible dilemma. Labour’s victory has rendered the Liberal Democrat leader and his party irrelevant. And irrelevant people often gravitate towards international wars to give them a sense of purpose. Sir Ed’s hawk-like gaze has turned on Ukraine and the threat by Donald Trump to ‘withdraw the allowance’ from Zelensky.
In the chamber, Sir Ed urged Sir Keir to ‘step up and fill the gap’ left by the US, either by mobilising the UK alone or by asking for assistance from the EU. His specific plan is to ‘freeze the assets’ of the Russians and to use ‘the underlying investment’ to curb Putin’s aggression.
It’s all very out of character. The Lib Dems usually oppose foreign wars but Sir Ed is swinging his cutlass around like a drunken conquistador. Where does his blood lust come from? Perhaps his Surbiton voters are pressurising him to enact their dreams of conquest and world domination. Or perhaps it’s Sir Ed himself who wants to make the Kremlin tremble and terminate Putin’s infamous career. We’ll have to wait till next week. If Sir Ed shows up in a military tunic, dark glasses and a holstered pistol, we’ll know.
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