It has taken Sir Keir Starmer just under 11 months to enter his Brezhnev era. Portly, autocratic and reliant on past glories, the Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by reading a list that would make Borat proud of the infrastructural benevolences to make benefit glorious region of Red Wall. In Sir Keir’s world, there is no decay or decline: the economy is booming, pensioners and children are well cared for and the streets are safe.
Notable by her absence was the Deputy Prime Minister: those windows of Downing Street won’t measure themselves
The praesidium – sorry, Front Bench – lapped this up. Or those who turned up did. Absent was the Chancellor who had been sent to gawp like an aquarium dweller in front of a group of factory workers who – like most people of taxpaying age – visibly despised her. One man kept plunging his head into his hands every time she spoke as the existential dread took over.
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