Fists flew at Prime Minister’s Questions. The party leaders sprang from their corners and bashed each other repeatedly in the face. It was fun to watch. Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir Starmer of performing so many U-turns that ‘his head must be spinning.’ Two weeks ago, he panicked and cancelled his decision to withdraw the winter fuel allowance. ‘The Chancellor is rushing her plans,’ she said, ‘because she’s just realised when winter is.’
Kemi sprang her trap. She leapt to her feet, glittering with triumph
Sir Keir shrugged this off. ‘I’m glad to see she’s catching up on what happened two weeks ago.’
Kemi delivered a booby-trapped question disguised as a query about the two-child benefit cap:
‘We believe people on benefits should have to make the same choices as everyone else,’ she said. And she added, pointedly. ‘What does the prime minister believe?’
Glancing at his notes, Sir Keir said, ‘I believe profoundly in driving down child poverty.’
Kemi sprang her trap. She leapt to her feet, glittering with triumph: ‘I asked what he believes – and he had to look in his folder to find the answer.’
She repeated this charge and accused Sir Keir of using Morgan McSweeney, his spin doctor, to give him moral guidance. But Sir Keir exploited Kemi’s reference to his notes and turned it to his advantage.
‘I’m going to look in my folder,’ he said. ‘And I’ll read it out.’ He quoted a statement made by Kemi about Britain using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia. These words had been praised by one of Vladimir Putin’s spokesmen. Kemi affected outrage:
‘I asked him about the two-child benefit cap and he’s talking about the Kremlin.’
Sir Lindsay Hoyle rose from the Speaker’s chair and took Kemi’s side against Sir Keir. He issued a veiled rebuke to the Prime Minister.
‘Let’s listen to the answers,’ he said, addressing the chamber, ‘even if you don’t think you’re getting one.’
A clear breach of impartiality. Nevertheless, a forgivable sin. An elderly Chair is apt to wobble.
Kemi brought her performance to a climax by reeling off a list of Sir Keir’s most recent blunders. Stalling the economy. Releasing more criminals. Losing control of our borders. ‘But he still managed to find £30 billion to give away the Chagos Islands.’
She summed it up as chaos and confusion.
‘Chaos, chaos, chaos,’ she said, using a motif with a venerable history in parliament. Mrs Thatcher said ‘no, no, no’ to Brussels. Tony Blair denounced John Major as, ‘weak, weak, weak.’ Kemi’s cry of ‘chaos, chaos, chaos,’ – which we heard twice today – is intended to echo these rhetorical barrages. But its impact is less powerful. Why? ‘Chaos’ has two syllables. One is punchier.
Kemi had a pretty good day. For Reform it was an afternoon to forget. Their newest MP, Sarah Pochin, called on Sir Keir to ‘ban the burqa.’ An illiberal policy. The country doesn’t need a dress-code devised by parliament and policed by goons. Imagine a bunch of half-witted cops enforcing a burqa ban at Taser-point.
Sir Keir ignored the question and made a gag about Liz Truss. That’s his automatic response whenever Reform are mentioned. His attack was aided by Tory backbencher, Lincoln Jopp, who referred to Nigel Farage’s desire to lavish more child benefit on fecund parents who have more kids than they can feed.
Jopp suggested that ‘the leader of Reform might be [a socialist] too.’
Sir Keir gladly expanded on this theme and attacked Reform for pledging ‘£80 billion of unfunded commitments.’ And he added, for good measure, ‘they’re Liz Truss 2.0.’
There we have it. Sir Keir’s re-election campaign in two soundbites.
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