Kemi Badenoch is doing all right at PMQs. The Tory leader is effective in the build-up but her finishing is weak. The point of the inquisition is make the interviewee tremble with fear. Here’s how she ended each of today’s question to Sir Keir Starmer:
‘What’s his advice to business owners laying off staff?’
‘Why should voters trust Labour again?’
‘Does he regret promising a council tax freeze?’
‘Will he break his fiscal rules or raise taxes?’
‘Does he disagree with the Bank of England?’
‘Is the motor industry being protected?’
Hardly killer points. Sir Keir swatted them aside without effort. The Prime Minister counter-attacked with a booby-trap that Kemi had set for herself. By not pledging to reverse Labour’s National Insurance tax hikes, she risked the charge of hypocrisy. Sir Keir said that she opposed his Budget in public but supports it in secret. She had no answer to that. Her backbenchers seem to have deserted her. Few of them appeared on the order paper today. Her best helper was Greg Smith, for mid-Buckinghamshire, who spoke on behalf of a near-bankrupt chocolatier who may not survive Sir Keir’s tax-raids. The PM used his favourite tactic. He cried about the ‘£22 billion black hole.’
Another Tory, Martin Vickers, asked about the destruction of Britain’s steel industry. Sir Keir beamed shamelessly. ‘I do believe there’s a bright future for steel,’ he said. Starmer feels invulnerable. No one in parliament wants to oppose him.
Globalist poodle, Sir Ed Davey, made a speech of breath-taking political illiteracy. The Lib Dem leader seems to imagine that the world is run by a Trump-Starmer duumvirate and that the PM has a veto over the White House. Sir Ed began with a lot of cant about the Myanmar earthquake which he appears to thinks is Britain’s responsibility. ‘I hope we can be as generous as possible,’ he said, without disclosing the sum donated from his personal account to the relief fund. Then he spouted more guff about reinforcing the Ukraine/Russia border. British troops are free to be deployed, apparently, because our frontiers are entirely impregnable.
Then Davey reached his main point: he advised Sir Keir to fix the world economy with a phone call or two. Sir Ed’s plan is to assemble an ‘economic coalition of the willing’ with the aim of ‘avoid[ing] a global trade war and a global recession’.
Sir Keir smirked at Sir Ed’s toadying: ‘Every week he tries to tempt me to make what I think is a false choice between our relationship with the US and our relationships with other countries, particularly in Europe.’
He is an effective speaker who looks good and talks tough
Sir Ed acknowledged Sir Keir’s admission that Britain is powerless in Washington. Then he forgot all about it and resumed his pretence that Sir Keir is the world’s second-mightiest potentate. ‘I hope the Prime Minister is able to cut a deal, but I increasingly fear that the deal will not be good enough to avoid a global trade war,’ he said.
And if Sir Keir fails, he went on, we must say ‘goodbye to free trade for a generation.’ Does Sir Ed have a Napoleon complex?
The only MP who showed any spirit was Ayoub Khan, a disillusioned leftie who represents Perry Barr in Birmingham. Khan’s checklist of Sir Keir’s betrayals included the winter fuel allowance, the Waspi women, the bedroom tax and the billions nabbed from disability claimants. He made an astronomical claim about the garbage rotting in Birmingham. Khan said that vast mountains of refuse can ‘be seen by satellites orbiting in space.’ His speech was so enjoyable that Lindsay Hoyle felt obliged to shut him up. ‘We are meant to ask quick question,’ advised the Speaker.
Sir Keir, for once, gave a clear answer: he will take action in Birmingham. What a great result for Khan. Khan used to belong to the Lib Dems but he abandoned them in favour of the ‘Independent Alliance’ in parliament. Which is what exactly? It seems to be a club for confused defectors who know which party they’ve left but can’t decide which one to join. Effectively it’s a Corbynite tribute band consisting of Jeremy himself and a five-strong team of backing players. Khan is an effective speaker who looks good and talks tough. Reform should give him a call.
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