The PM need work no more on his patient, calm, Government of Service persona. It has achieved the perfection of the pulpit; gleaming with episcopal polish.
He rose to the despatch box and laid before the House with simplicity, humility, and (were we imagining it?) a hint of submission to the eternal, the murdered David Amess, a dead general, a Holocaust survivor, and Alex Salmond. Ah, yes, what a hole he left behind him.
Sir Keir’s famous idea is that he and his Cabinet constitute the grown-up Restoration. But his clerical calm is (with thanks to Julie Burchill’s formula), a child’s idea of what a grown-up is. As most of us discerned from the age of nine – grown-ups are not just boring and evasive but essentially fraudulent.
So, the pleasure it gives is very considerable when the Prime Minister is rattled out of his piety, to reveal a familiar and slightly rat-like political character within.
It was this that, with considerable House of Commons skill, Rishi Sunak manouevred him into showing us all.
Rishi noted China’s militaristic exercises in the Taiwan Straits, and got a slightly unsteady answer. He brought up David Lammy’s forthcoming visit to Beijing and got a neatly packaged response. He brought up the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme that would detect and deter China’s attempts to intimidate and coerce our citizens and said that the Government was declining to implement it. Then he asked one of those lethal, one-word questions: “Why?”
Yes, good question actually. Why?
The PM stood. He paused. He summoned an answer. Nothing arrived. The political Deliveroo had gone to the wrong address. Keir mustered any eloquence he could and said, “That isn’t … correct.”
And to cat calls, hooting, cries of astonishment, he sat down. It was a loss of face that even Gordon Brown did not suffer.
He might have got away with it by invoking the sacred bond of secrecy between a prime minister and his security service, but he isn’t quick like that. He is calm. He is stable. He is patient and serious. He is not agile.
Rishi had more. He deposited, en passant, a poisonous little barb under the prime minister’s skin: “If he is going to give the security forces the tools they need, I would urge him to get up to speed on this.”
The courteous manner was particularly cruel and gave additional pleasure to aficionados of parliamentary brutality.
But then the finale. The Freedom of Speech Bill of the previous government would have protected universities from the (actually shocking) degree of political and intellectual suppression China has bought for itself in Russell Group universities. This is well known and has a dimension of national security to it.
The PM now actually stuttered. He said he didn’t think this was a suitable area for party political points. That is what he said. Protecting the speech rights of indigenous students against the imperial reach of a foreign power was a party political point. And for once, the backbench howling and front bench cringing (indeed, very talented, almost experimental howling and cringing) destabilised him. He limped off in entirely the wrong direction:
“Throughout the last Parliament we stood with Government on all matters of security.” He tried to gain some purchase on the argument. “I worked with the security and intelligence service for five years, prosecuting cases. I know first hand the work they do, as a lawyer. And as prime minister. And he knows that.”
The, “And he knows that,” as he sat down produced actual, non-performative cringing. It was within the three most embarrassing moments of a generation. We must be grateful to the PM for allowing us into the inner sanctum of his psyche (and for allowing us out again).
The mortification – which should have been good for the episcopal soul – pushed him into a childish conclusion. “He talks about the last government…” he began and then we were off China, national security and WWIII and back to utter failure, fewer choices, foundation-fixing and giving the country its future back.
Not calm, not patient, not serviceable.
NB: Alex Smith (L) set back her career in the party by a full parliament as she urged the abolition of the hereditary principle. Has she no idea how the Labour party works?
Starmer just can’t get out of the habit. He’s given Sunak his old job back at PMQs…
Maybe Starmer wants to forget the last 100 days ever happened. It was a dour job otherwise as Sunak targeted Labour’s policy on China without scoring easy hits on taxes and freebies. Starmer batted those jabs away…
It’s been over three months since the general election, and almost all new MPs (335 of them – over half of the Commons) are still without phones in their parliamentary offices. Thanks to Westminster’s sluggish and bureaucratic setup, the only way to get in touch with them is via email, which usually takes weeks to get a response. Not exactly ideal for those needing to get business done…
Fresh-face MPs have complained to Guido about the how “frustrating” the painfully slow process has been. Not least because any hack with a deadline who wants to speak to an MP’s office have no efficient way of doing so. Some have taken matters into their own hands, with one LibDem MP even posting their business WhatsApp number on the parliamentary website just to be contactable. If it takes more than three months just to install a phone, one wonders how long it takes to get anything else done…
Last night Labour MPs finished voting for the membership of departmental select committees. Here are the results:
Membership is allocated proportionally to representation in the Commons. Plenty of seats for aspiring Labour performers to fill…
Ellie Reeves has ‘updated’ the Commons on rule changes Labour is pursuing in the ongoing freebiegate scandal. Reeves blames the Tories for an anodyne discrepancy between ministerial declarations and MP declarations…
Reeves says the government will close Tories’ “freebie loophole” with a new version of the register of ministers’ gifts and hospitality – to function on a “broadly equivalent” basis to the MP register. The ministerial register is only different in that the value of gifts is not declared and it is published every quarter as opposed to every fortnight. Altering that system does nothing to address Labour’s rank hypocrisy over months of freebies revelations…
Seeing as the Tories managed to get an Urgent Question in Shadow Paymaster General John Glen asked Reeves for a few clarifications, including:
Reeves launched on the Tories in response and said she’d “take no lectures” as Labour backbenchers are rolled out to list historic Tory freebie-taking. Pressed on Swiftgate, Reeves stuck to the line that the top-level security motorcade was an “operational matter” for the police, despite the fact that the Attorney General, Mayor of London, Sue Gray, and the Home Secretary all personally got involved in lobbying the Met. Labour’s lines on the latest freebiegate scandal are going as well as all the last ones…
