A decent tussle today at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer asked the Prime Minister why he’d ditched his pledge to build 300,000 new houses a year. Rishi Sunak, ever fleet of foot, replied with shameless effrontery. The PM claimed that dropping the target was a superb Tory achievement and that it aligned seamlessly with the government’s priorities: protecting the green-belt, heeding local communities, and handing power to people at the grassroots. He dared Sir Keir to stand against those noble aims. He added that the Labour leader had said on Monday:
‘Government should be giving people more power and control.’
And today is Wednesday; so why the change of heart, asked Sunak.
‘I know he flip-flops – but even for him it’s pretty quick.’
The Tories yelled out ‘more! more!’
Sir Keir froze theatrically, gave a snuffle, and turned to his party with bemused outrage
Sir Keir is plugging the line that Rishi has been captured by right-wing Tory headbangers. That’s how he explained the U-turn:
‘His backbenchers threatened him…the blancmange Prime Minister wobbled’.
Blancmange? Not an insult that will bear repetition.
Sir Keir turned to Baroness Mone, who has been linked to a firm that provided PPE at the start of the Covid terror. Rishi told the House that he’d been ‘shocked’ by the allegations levelled at Mone.
Sir Keir froze theatrically, gave a snuffle, and turned to his party with bemused outrage. He raised an arm, palm upwards in wonderment, like a child finding his favourite toy smashed. ‘He was shocked?’ said Sir Keir disbelievingly. ‘He signed the cheques!’
The SNP’s Stephen Flynn was called. The little-known member for Aberdeen South has inherited the leadership of the SNP in Westminster following a coup against Ian Blackford. Flynn is a tall, gaunt, funeral-director type with hollow eyes and a shaven head that gleams like a cue-ball. Not a man you’d want to share a cell with.
He saluted his predecessor, the well-fed Blackford, and made a passing reference to his renown as a connoisseur of resplendent lunches. ‘He is a giant,’ he said, with a timely pause, ‘of the Scottish independence movement.’ Flynn asked Rishi to name his greatest achievement since the landslide victory in 2019. Crafty! A concise and pointed attack. But no. Flynn went on to offer Rishi a list of issues to boast about.
‘Leaving the single market? Ending free movement? Or denying Scottish democracy?’ Flynn added a fourth option. Was he most proud ‘of getting Labour to agree to all of the above?’ So this wasn’t a question. Just a piece of grandstanding for Westminster-bashers in Scotland who want proof that Labour and Conservative governments are equally rotten. Rishi replied with gentle irony and saluted the rhetorical technique of Ian Blackford whose blathering speeches elicited a collective howl of anguish every Wednesday.
‘I know the whole house will miss his weekly contribution,’ said Rishi.
Matt Warman, MP for Skegness, mentioned a public meeting where locals expressed their fury about the throngs of asylum-seekers dumped on their town. Warman softened their anger and merely said that Skegness was felt to be ‘wrong’ for the newcomers. What he meant was that their arrival is unlikely to enhance its attractions as a family resort.
Rishi acknowledged that the problem isn’t going away. He said that £6 million is being blown on these long-term guests each day. ‘And hotels are incredibly expensive,’ added the financial wizz-kid. Anything else? Not really. To be strictly accurate, he claimed that the government is ‘urgently’ laying plans to tackle the crisis. Then again, ‘urgently’ is Rishi for ‘never.’
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