Sir Keir is having a wobble. That’s obvious. The Labour leader holds an equestrian title, so he naturally feels at home on his high horse. Today at PMQs he loftily commanded Boris not to raise taxes in the budget. That was hilarious. A Labour leader begging a Tory Prime Minister not to implement Labour policy. If Sir Keir had produced a viola from his trousers and played ‘Waltzing Matilda’ he couldn’t have looked more ridiculous. Boris was so stunned that he could barely speak.
‘Well, I don’t know about you Mr Speaker,’ he bumbled. Then he pointed out that in 2019 Sir Keir had ‘stood on a manifesto to put up taxes by the biggest amount in the history of this country.’
Sir Keir is not only bad at PMQs but he appears to hire bad advisers and to listen to them very closely. Two weeks ago he surprised everyone with a sharp, nimble performance but today he relapsed into his old speechifying ways. He likes to cite every single government blunder and he delivers his dressing-down in a petulant, tinny, ‘not-good-enough’ moan, like a gym teacher berating a useless hockey-team.
Why does no one tell him to change his style and rhythm? Do it differently. Stick to a single issue. Keep his questions brief to starve his enemy of thinking-time. And break up his six queries into two bursts of three rather than asking them all in a single block. That might unsettle the PM. But Boris is so well-attuned to Sir Keir’s clippety-cloppety Shire-horse methods that he rarely shows any concern, let alone anxiety, at the despatch-box. When the Labour leader brought up a list of ancient controversies, including the Garden Bridge fiasco, Boris didn’t even lift his eyes from his notes. He just flapped a vague hand in the general direction of the nuisance, as if brushing a confused moth out of a window. To amuse himself he improvised one of his eye-popping similes about Sir Keir.
‘He weaves hither and yon like a Druidical rocking-stone.’
Probably not a classic. The SNP’s Ian Blackford delivered his favourite misery-memoir about starving families and abandoned nippers who need billions of pounds in emergency aid to survive. But billions won’t cut it anymore. Blackford asked Boris to follow the beacon that is Joe Biden and to promise a $1.9 trillion package. Yes. He wants trillions. How much of that would be spent on legal fees connected to the Sturgeon/Salmond case he didn’t say. Without this investment, he went on, Boris was destined to impose, ‘yet another decade of Tory austerity’ on Scotland.
Hang on. That takes us to 2031. An unwitting slip. Blackford predicts that Labour will lose the next two elections, and that independence for Scotland is a fantasy. Maybe he’s right but he should keep his gloom to himself.
The highlight of the session came from Sir Ed Davey. Sir Ed’s self-regard is so vast that he could teach a masterclass in megalomania. First he congratulated himself on a policy change that will bring people with learning difficulties to the head of the vaccination queue. Everyone in the country credits Jo Whiley with catalysing this reform. But not Sir Ed. Sir Ed credits Sir Ed. Then he brought up the persecution of the Uyghur people in China and advised the PM to boycott the Winter Olympics. My goodness, that came out of nowhere. What a devastating ultimatum. What a stroke of genius. The long history of diplomacy has rarely seen such a deadly trap being wielded with so much subtlety and skill. ‘Stop the killing,’ says Sir Ed, ‘or we won’t use your ice-rink.’ The Chinese are bound to capitulate. Probably before midnight. They have no choice. Otherwise Sir Ed may issue another chilling threat. ‘Push us too far and we’ll withhold the ladies curling team.’ It’s hard to see China wriggling out of that one.
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