The plot to shoot Diane Abbot dominated PMQs. The Tory donor, Frank Hester, reportedly said that the MP for Hackney North inspired violent thoughts in him, and made him want to ‘hate all black women.’ Sir Keir Starmer asked if Rishi Sunak was happy to be bankrolled by someone who harboured fantasies about gunshots and bullet wounds.
Rishi replied in kind and trotted out insults like ‘scum’ and ‘Nazi’ that have been hurled at the Tories by Labour members over the years. He pleaded for tolerance towards his financial backer. ‘He has rightly apologised. And that remorse should be accepted.’
Rishi could perhaps offer Hester a jaunt in a navy Chinook – but they’re probably all being repaired
Sir Keir answered Rishi’s point by insisting that the Labour movement had been transformed under his leadership. ‘He’s describing a Labour party that no longer exists,’ he said. A strange comment that might have exposed him to ridicule in different circumstances. But today Rishi was under attack from all sides. Labour’s Abdul Khan told him to ‘get his house in order’ and the SNP’s Stephen Flynn called Hester ‘downright bloody dangerous’.
Surely, it wouldn’t be long before Hitler was mentioned and the H-word was duly supplied by Mark Francois. However, he chose a different issue, the underfunding of Britain’s military. Evoking the 1930s, he said that Chamberlain had failed to recognise the growing menace of Hitler and this oversight had led to ’50 million deaths’. Francois demanded the expansion of our defence budget and he added that he spoke as ‘the son of a D-Day veteran’. Why would that make a difference?
This is the fatuous sophistry peddled by Sadiq Khan (son of a bus driver) and Keir Starmer (son of a tool-maker) who evidently support the aristocratic belief that moral superiority is conferred at birth and that virtue is a heritable quality. Like them, Francois maintains that the children of public servants speak with greater authority than lesser breeds, and he ordered Rishi to invest extra cash in Britain’s toy soldiers.
It may be too late for that. The Royal Navy’s gravest threat today comes from its own officers who can’t steer their ships in a straight line or get their missiles to fire. And it’s not clear what the navy would spend the extra cash on. Life-jackets decorated with rainbows, perhaps, and white flags woven from sustainable cotton.
Tobias Ellwood, the noted lockdown fanatic, proposed a wheeze to improve the NHS: more medals. He asked Rishi to establish a new system of badges and pins for hard-working staff who have ‘devoted most of their lives to helping others’. The PM gently pointed out that three such systems already exist. Health workers are acknowledged by parliament, by the NHS itself and in the official honours system. But three systems isn’t enough. Ellwood demands a fourth. He is, of course, free to strike his own medals and to subsidise the ceremonies out of his personal fortune. But he expects his pet project to be funded by anyone other than himself.
Labour’s backbenchers guided the debate back to Hester and his infamous remarks. Marsha de Cordova parroted her question from a sheet of A4, either because it was too hard to memorise, or because it had been written for her by Labour’s top team of sloganeers. She could barely be heard above the cries of ‘shame, shame!’ rising from anguished MPs all around her. De Cordova accused Rishi of accepting treats from the Tory donor which included ‘the use of a helicopter’. And she wanted this freebie ‘reimbursed’ immediately. ‘Yes or no?’ she demanded. But it’s rather tricky to reciprocate the gift of a helicopter trip. Rishi could perhaps offer Hester a jaunt in a navy Chinook – but they’re probably all being repaired.
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