‘Sir Softie.’ That’s Rishi’s new nickname for Sir Keir Starmer. ‘Sir Softie,’ he called out twice at PMQs. ‘He’s soft on crime!’ The insult works because it’s easy to remember and pleasantly alliterative. And it builds on an existing perception of Sir Keir as a criminal-hugging lawyer.
Sir Keir set out to overturn that impression by posing as the scourge of the law-breaking classes. He started with a trick question. Citing the case of a man found guilty of scalding a prison officer with boiling water, he asked if the offender deserved a jail sentence. Rishi could tell that this was a booby-trap so he answered in generalities. Sir Keir had to unpick his subterfuge. The convicted man received a suspended sentence because several years had passed between the offence and the date of the court case. Terrific. What a brilliant way to highlight the collapse of Britain’s justice system. Well it’s brilliant if you’re a legal whiz kid speaking to other legal whiz kids. Sir Keir seems unaware that most voters regard lawyers as scrounging lightweights with modest abilities and immodest fees.
He continued his ‘broken Britain’ theme by naming the public services allegedly wrecked by Tory incompetence. ‘Roads! Trains! The NHS! The asylum system! Policing! Mental health provision!… The Tories have broken them all.’ As he harrumphed and snorted through his list he was wildly cheered by his backbenchers. Then he delivered a peal of Wagnerian anguish. ‘Why, everywhere you look, does nothing seem to work at all?’ More ecstasies from his MPs. But not every voter shares Labour’s perverse lust for ruin.
Sir Keir finished by complaining about over-stuffed prisons. Judges are being discreetly warned not to increase the problem when delivering sentences, (‘be aware of the prison population’ says the coded advice). But is that bad news for the government? ‘Vote Tory for fuller prisons’ sounds like a law-and-order message. And by bringing up sentencing, Sir Keir gave Rishi a chance to boast about his new prisons programme. Up to 20,000 extra places are being built – nearly enough to house the incoming wave of offenders from the SNP.
Their leader in Westminster, Stephen Flynn, has contracted a bad case of windbaggery – perhaps inherited from his garrulous predecessor, Ian Blackford. Instead of putting questions to the PM, Flynn makes speeches for the benefit of SNP voters at home. Suddenly he feels the need to shore up his support in Scotland. Why could that be? Today, in a convoluted effort, Flynn signalled his solidarity with striking nurses, his yearning for independence, his phobia of Brexit and his tribal loathing of the Tories. Rishi ignored these ritual complaints and reminded Flynn of the ‘Barnet consequentials’, a sum of £1.5 billion, being paid to the SNP. Flynn is a nimble-witted speaker but he wastes parliament’s time with his divisive posturing.
A more interesting question was put by Flynn’s SNP colleague, Chris Law, the pony-tailed member for Dundee who looks like a Dutch porn-star dressed up for an awards ceremony. Today, he revealed a fresh SNP scandal. Law told parliament that the Holyrood government has been attempting to negotiate diplomatic side-deals with foreign powers as if Scotland were an independent nation. This skulduggery is so widespread that UK embassies around the world have been told to warn their hosts about bogus overtures from the SNP. Law believes this attempt by the Foreign Office to stop the SNP from acting as a separate country is a curtailment of its rights. To everyone else it looks like yet more proof of the SNP’s arrogance and megalomania. The death spiral of Scottish nationalism continues.
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