Kemi Badenoch has made PMQs her own. Her own what? Her own select committee. That’s how she runs it. She asks long rambling questions that exhibit her knowledge of the subject. Then she hands over to Sir Keir who rambles back at her, taking his time, feeling no pressure to answer. Not much drama or excitement at all. Kemi, with her beautiful manners and perfectly modulated English, has the air of a head girl investigating a fire at the hockey pavilion. Sir Keir answers with glib and defensive evasions that are often delivered in exasperated tones. His preening vanity is plain for all to see and yet Kemi can’t burst his bubble.
Today she asked about his beleaguered attorney general. He just huffed and puffed back at her. Well, your attorney general was worse than my attorney general, he said. So there.
Kemi’s substantial topic was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Labour wants to depopulate Gaza, it seems. They’re shipping a family of six Palestinians over here, and many more will follow if the judges favour the removals. Which they do. The decision of the courts must be challenged, said Kemi.
‘She hasn’t quite done her homework,’ said Sir Keir. ‘The decision was taken under the last government.’
Homework, see? They’re bickering like schoolkids. Kemi reminded him that the earth’s population includes ‘millions in terrible situations but we cannot help them all and we cannot bring them all here.’
Sir Keir did his playground thing again. ‘We’re taking control. They lost control.’ He jeered at her, almost in a sing-song chant. ‘Open borders. Empty promises. Same old Tories.’
He accused her of reading scripted questions and of failing to respond to his replies. She threw the same accusation at him. ‘He didn’t listen to Question One. I asked if he would appeal the decision [about the Palestinian family] and he did not answer that.’
Kemi is starting to argue like Sir Keir. Their exchanges sounded like a mock-trial at the Inner Temple.
Sir Ed Davey accidentally revealed his true self to the house. He started by rabbiting away like some dotty old grandad about the military position in western Europe in February 1945. He spoke of ‘pincer movements in the Rhine and the Ruhr’ and he linked this to the lasting fraternity between the US, Britain Canada. He then moved to Donald Trump’s tariffs and he warned that they will ‘hit Canada hardest.’ OK, but why is he posing as Canada’s head of state? That’s the King’s job.
He said his purpose was to ‘remind President Trump who his true and long-standing friends really are.’ Thanks, Sir Ed.
Then he ordered Sir Keir to slap tariffs on electric cars from America. Obviously the target is Tesla and and its owner, Elon. And yet the Lib Dems adore battery-operated vehicles. For decades they’ve been campaigning for larger and more extensive green transport schemes. Why the change of heart? Well, it’s simple. Sir Ed finds Elon offensive. So Elon’s clean green vehicles-of-the-future must be clobbered with arbitrary fines. What a fascinating admission. It turns out that the Green cult was never about curbing pollution. It was just an opportunity for windbags and control-freaks like Sir Ed to indulge in moral posturing. And there was more. Sir Ed moved to his main topic. Russia. He couched his remarks in the severest terms.
‘The way Trump and his ally, Musk, are operating, they do need to hear strong words even from their allies.’
Next, he drew a line in the sand. No. He drew a line in the history books! He said that Ukraine must not yield one inch of ‘sovereign territory’ to Russia. Crikey. But what if Ukraine does?
‘It will be the greatest betrayal of a European ally since Poland in 1945,’ declared Sir Ed.
The lunacy of this remark is a little difficult to unscramble. Sir Ed seems to argue two points. First, that Britain and the US were wrong to let Stalin take Poland without a fight. Secondly, that if Russia takes Ukraine, or any part of it, we must respond with military force. That seems to be the Lib Dem position. They want war with Putin. Poor Sir Ed is losing his marbles.
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