The insincere NHS tributes at PMQs

The birthday of our sacred NHS was celebrated at PMQs. Appropriately enough there was a lengthy waiting-list of MPs ready to pay insincere tribute to the medics who care for the sick once they’ve finished painting rainbows on their faces and rehearsing dance-moves in the corridors. Rishi Sunak ducked the session altogether. He was at a church service packed with grandees offering thanks to God for supporting the NHS (from time to time) during the 75 years of its existence.

To some, the PM’s church visit looked a little rum. Our Hindu prime minister kneeling in Westminster Abbey and simultaneously worshipping two gods he doesn’t believe in: Jesus Christ and free universal healthcare. And those who rely on the national health won’t be comforted to see Britain’s leader begging God Almighty to fix the system. It seems desperate.

In the chamber, all was unction and praise for our NHS heroes. There was no mention of the strikers who exploit the suffering of patients in order to extort money from their employers. Or was there? Angela Rayner (deputising for Sir Keir Starmer) paid tribute to ‘those who continue to work for the NHS.’ It sounded like a dig at those who don’t.

Smirking Oliver Dowden makes a pretty smooth understudy. Rayner said she relishes facing Dowden at PMQs because it proves that the prime minister ‘really has given up.’ Dowden shot back:

‘Some leaders trust their deputies to stand in for them.’

The session was subdued, the house half-empty. Swathes of vacant green leather were visible on both sides of the chamber. Where was everyone? It was sparser than an after-dinner speech by Theresa May. Tory MPs can be excused for attending jobs fairs and meeting recruitment consultants. As for Labour members, they were probably being lunched by green lobbyists keen to loot the £28 billion promised by Starmer for bogus energy schemes.

The two deputies, both redheads, traded insults that sounded identical. Rayner, adorned in her Wetherspoons finery, said that the Tories had crashed the economy. Dowden recalled that the last Labour government had completely run out of cash. Rayner shifted to housing and suggested that a queue of a million people are waiting for a council home (and that’s just in northern France). Dowden claimed the Tories are better at building homes than Labour. Rayner scored points with a caustic rant about the ‘Tory mortgage bombshell’ and prices rising across the board.

‘The only thing not soaring are his gags which are getting cheaper by the minute.’

She tried to pluck at our heartstrings by recounting the miseries of a constituent, ‘Jessica’, whose tenancy came to an end. With no other option, tragic Jessica was taken in by a kindly relative. Rayner completed the picture of woe by revealing one particularly gruesome detail: Jessica’s oppressed family are sleeping on ‘blow-up beds surrounded by their belongings.’ Elon Musk is said to stay overnight in his factories in more or less the same conditions so perhaps things aren’t so bad. But Rayner uses Jessica’s inconvenience to lobby for the ruin of residential property rights. She calls this daft policy ‘an end to no-fault evictions’. Rayner’s new law will drive owners out of the rental market altogether and create a housing scarcity. No landlord wants a tenant with the right to stay forever.

Richard Drax complained about a new superyacht due to dock near his Dorset constituency. The luxury hulk will accommodate 560 seafarers, or migrants, whom he calls ‘unmonitored.’ Drax is a pessimist and he sees life through the lens of famine not plenty. By opening up the floating Ritz to locals, in return for a modest fee, he might turn it into a financial asset. He could lead the way by booking a fortnight in a suite with an ocean view and a balcony. Cheer up, man.