Are we going to war? The first PMQs since the election was like a military briefing between the Tory chief and the new prime minister. Rishi Sunak, now opposition leader, began with a few standard noises about Ukraine’s need for more weapons. He urged Sir Keir Starmer to ask the Germans to send ‘long-range missiles’ in addition to those already pledged by the Americans and by us. To strike where, exactly?
The rest of the session was a doddle for Sir Keir
Sunak then mentioned a fancy new jet-fighter and parroted a phrase from the armourer’s brochure. ‘A crucial sovereign jet capability,’ he called it. He added that Saudi Arabia ‘has a desire to join the programme.’ Labour politicians are usually shy of arming the Saudis but Sir Keir showed no signs of bashfulness. His chops were positively dripping at the prospect of pushing a few shiny new jet-fighters on the Saudi government.
‘This is a really important programme,’ he enthused, and he sounded upbeat about ‘initial discussions, not least at Farnborough where I was a few days ago.’
The briefing ended with references to an immediate attack. Sunak mentioned that the government has a right to ‘respond militarily’ without holding a vote in parliament. Strike first, discuss it later. That’s the policy. ‘The use of prerogative power is sometimes controversial but essential to ensure the safety and the security of the British people,’ said Sunak, and he pledged his full support, at any time. Sir Keir thanked him for this unconditional offer to help in some ill-defined future conflict. It was all very odd.
The rest of the session was a doddle for Sir Keir. ‘There’s a crisis everywhere,’ he said in response to MPs who begged for money or asked to be given the captaincy of an ‘emergency task-force’.
It got nasty between Labour and the SNP when Stephen Flynn brought up child benefits. Flynn urged Sir Keir to end the two-child cap which ‘forces children into poverty.’ Sir Keir snapped back that Flynn’s SNP has created an extra 30,000 child paupers in Scotland. Flynn was angrily seconded by Pete Wishart, an irascible ex-pop star who tried to topple the Labour government live on television. ‘The headlines are awful,’ he yelled, ‘the poverty campaigners are furious.’ He claimed that Labour’s honeymoon was ‘over before it’s begun.’
The Commons was full of backbenchers asking for the impossible. Mohammad Yasin, like a lot of Labour MPs, seems to have fallen victim to Pax Britannica syndrome. Does he think that Britain has the power to end any war, anywhere, at any time, by sending in a gunboat or two? Yasin effectively instructed Sir Keir to impose peace on the Middle East. And the PM agreed with this idea. He almost said ‘yes’ but not quite. His actual words were: ‘Under Labour this will be discussed.’
The same fudge was served to Bill Esterson who claims to have solved Britain’s energy crisis. His breakthrough, known as the Mersey Tidal Project, will create lots of fantastic jobs and provide limitless electricity at virtually no cost. Or so you might think from what was said in the Commons. Sir Keir said the tides of Liverpool might add a few volts of power to the grid. ‘We’ll look at them carefully,’ he equivocated.
A new Green MP, Adrian Ramsay, rhapsodised about the glories of nature and referred admiringly to the ‘16th Biodiversity COP’ in Cali, Colombia. (Easy to reach by bicycle or private jet). This gathering of long-haul aircraft in south America isn’t enough for the Green party which, according to Ramsay, wants Britain to host a ‘UN nature summit’ as well. Sir Keir slapped him down for opposing green projects in his own constituency. Poor chap. He looked outraged by this public rebuke.
Never again will Sir Keir will have it so easy.
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