We have two leaders of the opposition. Labour can’t decide which is the larger threat. Prime Minister’s Questions opened with a botched query from Labour backbencher Dan Tomlinson. He asked Sir Keir Starmer to comment on a possible pact between the Tories and Reform.
An amazing spectacle. An MP so clueless that he can’t ask a question without being ruled out of order. ‘The Prime Minister has no responsibility for any of that,’ said the Speaker. Tomlinson sat down, unanswered. But the timing of the question, at the start of the session, indicates that Sir Keir’s team are terrified of an anti-Labour alliance.
We have two leaders of the opposition. Labour can’t decide which is the larger threat
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked about the rape-gang scandal. Referring to Labour’s plan to set up ‘local inquiries’ she asked for more data. One enquiry will be held in Oldham. ‘Where are the others?’
Sir Keir didn’t specify. ‘We are providing for local inquiries,’ he said. Kemi pointed out that making funds available is not the same as forcing inquiries to start. She accused him of procrastinating because ‘he doesn’t want Labour cover-ups exposed.’
Sir Keir squirmed visibly. His tactic, which was partially successful, was to frame the issue as a test of his professionalism against Kemi’s. To make this work, he had to compare his career as a prosecutor many years ago with Kemi’s record in government fairly recently. Yanking the two time-frames together was difficult. He sort of got away with it.
‘I oversaw the first grooming gang prosecution in Rochdale,’ he said, establishing his credentials as a lifelong hunter of child rapists. And he accused her of failing to raise the issue while she was minister for Women and Equalities. In his eagerness to boast about his forensic skills and his sleuthing abilities, he took us back to the earliest rape-gang dossier.
‘I was the prosecutor that brought the first case,’ he repeated. But the file contained an anomaly that only a legal genius would have spotted.
‘I noticed that one of the defendants had not been prosecuted previously,’ he said, mysteriously. This altered the whole case, apparently, although he didn’t say why.
‘On the back of that I changed the entire approach to prosecutions,’ he added, still without clarifying the details. Then he improvised this strange sentence:
‘My record was going after where I thought something had been going wrong and putting it right. She stayed silent.’
He’s clearly uncomfortable with this issue, hence his desire to obfuscate, to deflect, and to time-travel back to his days as a lawyer.
The Labour movement instinctively knows that the issue of rape-gangs will cost them votes. Hence this unscripted comment by Nadia Whittome who was called as soon as Kemi had sat down.
‘I wish she’d stop weaponising victims to score political points. A disgrace,’ she said, referring to the Tory leader. How many victims would agree with that?
Next, Nigel Farage. He accused Sir Keir of allowing 10,000 undocumented males to enter the country illegally. He called for ‘a national emergency’ to be declared.
Sir Keir accused Reform of opposing Labour’s bill to end ‘this foul trade.’ But it was the next bit that mattered. Josh Simons was called and he made a bland statement about the NHS before swivelling back to Farage:
‘For decades he has pushed to dismantle the NHS to ensure that our constituents must pay.’
Sir Keir picked up on his pre-scripted cue. And he repeated a statement allegedly made by Farage:
‘We’re going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare.’
Reform claims that this disputed quote was not made by Farage as a statement of policy. Sir Keir has now invited a counterattack on the subject of his integrity as PM. This could get interesting.
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