What a crazy muddle that was. Boris has spent two weeks digging a hole for himself and Sir Keir Starmer’s job at PMQs was to give him a shove and watch him disappear. The Labour leader pointed out that some in the cabinet have apologised for backing Owen Paterson but the PM has failed to follow suit.
‘Do the decent thing and say sorry,’ urged Sir Keir, ‘for trying to give a green light to corruption.’ Boris admitted to making a mistake, and then he raised Sir Keir’s receipt of £25,000 from the law firm, Mishcon de Reya.
Speaker Hoyle leapt up and declared that Sir Keir’s affairs are outside the PM’s remit. Everyone knows this – not least because Hoyle mentions it virtually every week. Anyway, isn’t Sir Keir big enough to look after himself?
Having been ordered not to mention the law firm, Boris did so again immediately. He can’t help himself. He’s the Katie Price of politics. He loves getting into trouble. It excites him. It makes him feel alive. His defiance brought a second slap down.
‘We play by the rules, don’t we?’ said the Speaker testily. And he hinted that he might ‘fall out’ with the Prime Minister.
Over to Sir Keir. He set up a well-rehearsed antithesis between his decisiveness and Boris’s irresponsibility.
‘When someone in my party misbehaves I kick them out,’ he began but he was silenced by the Speaker who tried to shush some clacking backbenchers.
‘This is not good,’ said Hoyle, ‘I want questions to be respected.’
When Sir Keir resumed he was forced to start again. So his thunder was stolen by the umpire who hadn’t listened to the man he was interrupting.
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