Sir Keir’s gag-writers were on good form at PMQs. Last week, the Tories lowered expectations by predicting a loss of 1,000 seats at the local election. And this worst-case scenario came true. ‘At last,’ crowed Sir Keir, ‘a Tory promise they haven’t actually broken.’
He also took aim at Rishi’s democratic illegitimacy. In last year’s leadership contest, Rishi lost to Liz Truss who was then outlasted by a lettuce. ‘He entered a two-horse race and somehow managed to come third,’ said Sir Keir.
Labour’s backbenchers roared at this like bison feasting in fresh green pasture. They can smell power in the air, and the breeze is moving their way.
Labour can smell power in the air, and the breeze is moving their way
Rishi accused Labour of relying on two threadbare policies: clobbering non-doms and taxing Big Oil. And he snuck in a well-disguised joke. He pretended to apologise for once admitting that he had no working-class friends. ‘We all say silly things, and I was teenager then,’ confessed the PM. ‘But in his 40s, the honourable gentleman was still taking abut abolishing the monarchy.’
Green party supremo Caroline Lucas mounted her own attack on Sir Keir. She wants to destroy his manifesto by pre-confiscating Big Oil’s assets before Labour can tax them.
A vast new oil lake has recently been discovered in the North Sea and this irritates Lucas because it contains the three things she hates most: wealth, energy and good news. She begged Rishi to withhold a drilling licence and effectively to ban Britain from availing of its own assets.
Her plan is so barmy that it has a kind of geometric perfection. Our fuel will languish untapped off our coast. The Chinese communist dictatorship will be paid to burn coal and to build steel turbines that we don’t really need. These luxury windmills will chug half way around the world aboard super-tankers that run on toxic diesel. The turbine shafts will then be planted in the very sea-beds that harbour our unused oil. And when the blades are set a-twirl, the juice they generate will be hailed as ‘clean green energy’. Sheer nonsense.
More net-zero folly was revealed by Tommy Shepherd in relation to Drax Power Station in Yorkshire. Drax calls itself a ‘renewable’ energy provider even though it burns forests. Shepherd estimates that 20,000 tons of timber are torched every day in the dragon’s craw of this fire-breathing monster. And £1.5 million a week is sent north by Whitehall to keep the trees aflame.
Rishi avoided the issue of Drax’s ‘scorched earth’ policy and waffled about green energy prices falling to £40 from £140. What does that even mean?
Several backbenchers weighed in on violent crime declining while computer fraud is on the rise. This makes sense for thieves. Cash is scarce nowadays and a stolen phone can easily be disabled so Britain’s criminals have turned to online larceny to make a dishonest crust.
Excellent news all round. Getting fleeced by a hacker is a nuisance but being mugged at knifepoint in broad daylight leaves the victim traumatised for years.
An upsurge in digital crime means a happier society. The streets are safer. The citizenry is liberated from paranoia and anxiety. Fewer cops are needed to chase villains through nasty housing estates. Less plasma is required to replace the blood spilled into the gutters by armed gangs. And nurses no longer have to stitch together the survivors of slicings and stabbings.
In fact, fraud is such a blessing that the Home Office should invest in it rather than reduce it. Three cheers for our computer extortionists. A wise government would export this UK success story around the world.
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