Lloyd Evans

Ian Blackford, the SNP MP, is to stand down at the next election. And last night he gave an interview to Anand Menon of the think-tank UK In a Changing Europe. The mood was cosy, the questions as soft as marshmallows. Menon opened with the issue of independence and he allowed Blackford to change the subject from ‘process’ to ‘the kind of country Scotland will be’. Blackford stated correctly that Scotland’s status as England’s poorer neighbour encourages the best and brightest Scots to move south. And he quoted a statistic suggesting that England has benefited from Scottish inward migration in every decade since the 1850s. He outlined a solution that was strong on slogans, weak on detail.

The tectonic plates were shifting at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer asked Rishi Sunak if the total NHS waiting list of 7.2 million had risen or fallen during his nine months in office. Rishi said the number was up because striking medics are denying treatment to the people whose taxes pay for it. He suggested that Sir Keir should get work-shy doctors to accept the pay increase recommended by an independent review. The SNP can’t show delight in public – party policy forbids any display of cheerfulness or amusement They tussled over the funding of a new NHS staffing policy. Sir Keir claimed that scrapping tax exemptions for non-doms will cover the cost but Rishi had heard it all before. ‘The same policy has paid for five different things. Everyone knows I’m keen on doing maths to 18.

Blindness, ignorance and folly were on fully display at PMQs. Rishi Sunak was absent in Vilnius where he’s busy discussing with his Nato chums how to prolong or escalate the war in Ukraine. His deputy, Oliver Dowden, tried to fend off some excellent, probing questions from Labour’s Angela Rayner. She berated the Tories for overseeing a rise of 75 per cent in the number of ‘homeless children.’ Dowden replied with a feeble scripted gag. ‘Her leader says he hates tree-huggers but they’ve been very keen on hugging that magic money tree.’ Labour members howled with derision at that daft quip. Bad day for Dowden. The Alba party’s Kenny MacAskill complained about global warming which continues to ignore the shivering citizens of Scotland.

‘Hold your nerve.’ Rishi’s ill-judged advice to voters last Sunday was perhaps his worst blunder yet. At PMQs it came up half a dozen times. Sir Keir Starmer made the first attempt but he was too verbose to inflict real damage. ‘Rather than lecturing others on holding their nerve why not locate his?’ He exposed Rishi’s confused housing policy and asked if any credible expert believes that the government will reach its house-building target this year. Rishi wriggled deftly and chucked out a few helpful statistics. ‘More homes are meeting our “decent homes” standard, the housing supply is up 10 per cent... and first-time buyers are at a 20-year high.

Sir Keir Starmer had two goals at PMQs. He wanted to convince us that life is dreadful and it’s all Rishi Sunak’s fault. And he showcased a new phrase that he’d like us to spout whenever interest rates are mentioned: ‘Tory mortgage penalty.’ He used it several times which suggests that he authored it himself. Clearly it stands zero chance of working its way into our heads. But no one at Castle Starmer had the guts to tell the good knight that he’d blundered. Rishi didn’t hold back. Normally the PM glides like a swan through PMQs but today he snapped irritably at Sir Keir for failing to understand that inflation is global. ‘As ever he isn’t aware of the global macro-economics,’ he yelped.

Honours dominated the exchanges at PMQs. Sir Keir asked why the Tories have spent an entire week bickering about which Conservative deserves ennoblement. Rishi claimed that he followed ‘established convention’ in approving Boris’s lavender-list. A bit of a whopper. He clearly didn’t support the candidacy of Nadine Dorries who complained in frothing prose about the ‘sinister forces’ that denied her a peerage. Sir Keir failed to spot Rishi’s clumsy footwork and instead he pretended that the PM approved ‘Johnson’s list’ in full. ‘Too weak to block it,’ said Sir Keir. Rishi shifted tack and mentioned the peerage granted to Labour’s Tom Watson who, he said, ‘spread vicious conspiracy theories that were utterly untrue and damaged our public discourse’.

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.