The first laugh line in an amiable PMQs came as soon as Labour’s indomitable deputy stood up. Explaining why she was at the despatch box, Angela Rayner slipped a sly, almost imperceptible shiv between her leader’s ribs saying he was in Samoa, looking for ideas about economic growth.
There are many reasons to visit the far-flung tropical paradise but “ideas for economic growth” is not one of them.
Having said that, their ancestral traditions of headhunting, spear-fighting and feasting on the organs of enemies will serve us all well when Labour’s net zero requirements meet their industrial strategy – but that’s for another time.
Questioners asked Angela about her signature dishes – Renters Reform and Day One Rights – and her answers provoked short, dense shouts of approval from behind her. For all her policies’ morbid effects on the economy and society, on renters and workers, on jobs and health and workplace relations and prosperity – she brings joy to Labour hearts. She is Labour’s throbbing socialist soul and her party loves her for it.
What was Keir thinking, giving her his slot to go to Samoa? Free trip, of course, first class cabin, nice hotel, nodding palms. But the more his party sees of his deputy the more they yearn towards her. She is why they joined Labour. To champion the vulnerable, bring comfort to the weary, minister to the dying, forgive us our sins, make the world a better place.
That it means feasting on the organs of the working class by taking their jobs, bankrupting their companies and closing their factories need not be faced.
Thus, Angela was able to answer Oliver Dowden’s unanswerable question with insuperable ideological confidence. He asked, “What is her definition of working people?” and she cried, “All those people let down by 14 years of Tory failure!”
It’s not the OED definition but it worked in the space.
Dowden asked if she agreed with the IFS who said that working people would suffer from an increase in employer NICs. He got ‘black hole’ back from that and so asked whether she agreed with herself when she described such an increase as an attack on working people?
She replied with Tory chaos, a 70-year high in taxes, and the mess they left behind.
Relations crossed a tipping point abruptly, as they can in the House, when Dowden mentioned this was to be their last exchange “Awwww!” And Angela referred to the Battle of the Gingers, and one or the other of them in the context of the Commonwealth talked about the shared “historical and cultural ties – much like the pair of us”. More “Awwwww!”
It was a glimpse of good nature and a life outside, below politics.
But she had to close on Tory chaos and “rebuilding Britain” and it was impossible not to reflect on our national ills. The 70-year tax high, the 100 per cent public debt, the sick bill, the economic stagnation – it all goes back to lockdown and the £400 billion debt (as Paul Hogan said, “No. THIS is a black hole.”).
The single greatest public policy error in anyone’s lifetime, it was mandated by the Tories and whooped on by Labour. Both parties implicated in and responsible for the fastest public spending since World War Two, and neither side now able to acknowledge the error
As the Tories go into their Corbyn years, the argument in this form won’t win for either party. They are two fighting crocodiles in a death roll with each other. It will end in tears, obviously, and two very sorry crocodiles.
No wonder Nigel Farage is looking so cheerful.
PS: A late questioner gave us a nice example of political overreach. She wanted her Government “to do everything to keep menopausal women happy, healthy and wonderful”.
Of the many things beyond the power of government – even more than bringing peace to the Middle East – that is almost certainly the first.
Those who are sated of Labour’s gift-aid scandals may look forward to a few sex-based novelties. The Labour couple said to have been at it in the Reasons Room (not the Reasons Room!) have been relocated to the Aye Lobby lavatory. This is an anonymous revelation even when the couple is named as no one has ever heard of them. They are new intake, as Frankie Howerd would be pleased to note. On the other hand, a more prominent name is said to be running amok on the estate with a libido the size of a small pig – knocking down fences, rooting in the soil, and truffling in public. That name can’t be suppressed forever, can it? It’s in no one’s interests.
The SNP’s Stephen Flynn used his question at PMQs to dig at Rayner over Labour’s USA campaining trip:
“In today’s spirit of cross party working, will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in applauding the brave Labour staff members who’ve travelled across the Atlantic to campaign against Donald Trump?”
In response Rayner issued the Labour line verbatim: “People in their own time often go and campaign and that’s what we’ve seen. It happens in all political parties – people go and campaign and they do what they want to do in their own time with their own money.“ While housed by Dems…
It’s the battle of the deputies today as Dowden and Rayner trade blows in the Commons while Starmer flies to Samoa. Dowden jumped in with a simple question: “What is the Deputy Prime Minister’s definition of working people?”
Rayner swerved in response:
“The definition of working people are the people that the Tory party have failed for the last fourteen years.”
Dowden pressed on: Are the 5 million small business owners in Britain working people? Again Rayner dodged the question…
Rachel Reeves made it clear and public what the party’s definition of working people was during the election campaign: “Working people are people who get their income from going out to work everyday, and also pensioners that have worked all their lives and are now in retirement.” The upcoming budget has had quite the effect on the Cabinet’s memories…
Not at all sure about this new Keir Starmer, this action man of passion. He will not tolerate this, and won’t stand for that, and certainly refuses to learn any lessons from the party opposite. No, he won’t. Not going to do that. Sorry.
Nor will he ever let Argentina take the Falklands because his uncle nearly died in the 1982 war. Gibraltar is also safe, even though none of his relatives nearly perished there. As leader of the opposition he was a rules-based civil servant. As prime minister, he bestrides the narrow world.
He’s going to rebuild Britain. He said that out loud. That he was given a “massive majority” to deliver national renewal and he would do it. Big job, that. It’s not like a subscription to Netflix. It’s not automatic. It takes giants to renew a nation. Is he going to get Tony Blair back, and Peter Mandelson?
In his half hour he gave half a dozen other sausages to fortune. Keir Starmer’s famous pork-based products – at least he’ll enjoy eating his words when the time comes.
He is going to “give the country its future back”. “Reset the relationship” between industry and its workers. Create “a new partnership” between bosses and the bossed. Crowd in billions of foreign investment.
Basted in pork fat, spitting and oozing, the sausages turned on fortune’s spit.
He will “house all veterans”. “Give all children the right support and raise standards for them all.” He will clean up the mess left by the last government. Create “tens of thousands of jobs” in offshore wind. Stabilise the economy. Yes, stabilise it.
On and on the sausage machine went.
How long before fortune turns on him? Let’s not be impatient. On the Government’s current trajectory, there should be a general moral, spiritual and national collapse on or around November 12th. At tea time.
On a more practical level, the PM did give one hint of an effective strategy to balance the nation’s books.
Hospices.
One of his more attention-seeking MPs had climbed Mt Kilimanjaro to help his local hospice, and having brought his efforts to the world’s attention asked for his leader’s reaction.
“We want everyone to have quality end of life care,” Keir told the House. Ahhhh! That’s what the Assisted Dying Bill is about. It’s to partner the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Retirees on the state pension probably cost the state three-quarters of a million pounds in benefits, healthcare and mobility scooters over their rest-of-life. If “life” isn’t too strong a word for it.
So: if we can help an extra 50,000 pensioners on their way, in the most compassionate, high-quality-care way (a painless injection and an exit tax) we can fill that fiscal black hole with them. Every year. And rid the country of 50,000 Tories. As a solution it’s not just economic, it’s political. And for the Left – total.
Not trying to hurry anything along, but who is to be the next prime minister? Nigel Farage arrived this morning in a prime ministerial black Range Rover with driver and bodyguards. Significantly, you might think, he came in the back way, taking us all by surprise.
There is actually a back way in to the British premiership. It requires a collapse of faith in the Labour party (“Surely not!”), an enduring revulsion with the Tories, a continuation of the Lib Dem revival, a Green bounce and a surge of Reform. A fragmented parliament, a disillusioned electorate, a working class enraged by the deindustrialisation of net zero. Out of the smoking hell of a 2029 election, the dark silhouette of a man called forth by destiny.
Or is James Cleverly more likely? Assuming he wins the leadership of the Tory party when Kemi collapses, informed conspiracists predict his position will be deputy prime minister. He will arrange for the return to Parliament in 2026 of his old friend and mentor, Boris Johnson, gracefully vacate the leadership in 2027, and in the event of a narrow Boris-based victory, take up his aimiable place in one of the nation’s great offices of state.
