Why did Sunak sound so tetchy at PMQs?

The last Prime Minister’s Questions of the year always has a festive, pantomime tone to it. That doesn’t mean it is always a cheery, comfortable experience for a prime minister, though, and it wasn’t today. At least Rishi Sunak could come to the chamber with the knowledge that his Rwanda legislation had passed its first hurdle in the Commons, rather than on the back of an angry and sizeable revolt by Tory MPs. The PM received loud cheers from Conservative MPs as he stood up. He even cracked a joke about there being a ‘record number of families’ under the Conservatives – reference to the hilarious new mafia-style branding for the five groups of Tory MPs now co-ordinating their response to the Rwanda legislation.

That joke was in response to an amusing question from Keir Starmer about Christmas being a ‘time of peace on earth and goodwill to all’. The Labour leader added: ‘Has anyone told the Tory party?’

Starmer’s next question was rather more critical:

‘He can spin it all he likes but the whole country can see that the Tory party is in meltdown and everyone is paying the price. Now, he’s kicked the can down the road but in the last week his MPs have said of him he’s not capable enough, he’s inexperienced, he’s arrogant, a really bad politician. This is what they said. Come on! Who said he was a really bad politician? Hands up! What about inexperienced? Who was that? Or, come on, there’s got to be some hands for this – he’s got to go? Why! Apparently he’s holding a Christmas party next week. How’s the invite list looking?’

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Rod Liddle

The Reformation is here

At this point, the Speaker interrupted and offered the traditional pantomime innuendo by telling MPs off for shouting, threatening that ‘you might not want the Christmas present that I could give you.’ Sunak retorted ‘he should hear what they have to say about him!’ Ho ho ho.

Starmer continued to paint a picture of a country that wasn’t being governed while backbenchers were ‘pretending to be the mafia’, and of a Prime Minister who was ‘cocooned in Number 10’. He asked about what the government was doing to help homeless families, citing two who were facing Christmas without homes. Sunak hit back with more force here, saying that if Starmer cared about building more homes, he would not have voted against reforms to remove EU rules preventing 100,000 new ones (these were the nutrient neutrality rules).

In the final question, Starmer asked Sunak to join him in wishing happy Christmas to everyone, including those in public service and the armed forces. Sunak sounded rather tetchy as he said that the Leader of the Opposition must have missed him wishing our armed forces a merry Christmas at the start. He then offered a list of what the government was doing, before moving onto the backbench questions. Those questions were interesting, because real troublemakers kept their counsel. Instead, there were mildly critical ones from backbenchers on campaign issues: steel production, pollution of rivers, electric cars and the missing reform of the Mental Health Act. That last question was a particularly passionate one from James Morris, a Tory MP who has campaigned pretty tirelessly on mental health for years. He pointed out that there was no Mental Health Act in the King’s Speech, and that people were continuing to be detained under outdated legislation, with their illnesses further stigmatised by the practice of sectioning, and their dignity denied by the conditions in which they were kept. He did not criticise the Prime Minister directly, but his frustration with what he pointed out was a manifesto promise from the party still not making its way onto the statute books was palpable.

Sunak responded that the government still wanted reform of the Mental Health Act ‘when parliamentary time allows’. Strangely, there has been time for the Rwanda fandango and the pantomime of the ‘five families’, but it keeps disappearing for something less politically salient. Perhaps Tory backbenchers need to create a ludicrously-named faction that stages regular press conferences to get that reform moving again.