An inevitably rowdy PMQs session today under the shadow of rail strikes and inflation. Sir Keir noticeably lacking any awkward references to Star Wars or Love Island – for the better – and Boris hammering away at the Labour frontbenchers showing up at the picket lines yesterday:
“[We’re] cutting the costs of transport for working people, mr speaker, by delivering reforms, while they’re out on the picket lines literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill. It’s worse than under Jeremy Corbyn. This is a government that is taking this country forward, they would take it back to the 1970s.”
Sets the stage for tomorrow’s by-elections…
Guido was surprised to see Sir Ed Davey during PMQs today claim that rural communities are “bearing the brunt of record fuel prices”, and calling for the expansion of the rural fuel duty relief scheme. Has anyone bothered to tell him his own party’s policies?
Not only have the LibDems repeatedly voted against the government’s fuel duty freezes – and this year’s fuel duty cut – the party’s own flagship climate policy, released back in September, actually calls for “reinstating the indexation of road fuel duty”. That would mean a return to regular yearly increases in the tax – and as indexed against RPI, would mean an 11% hike in the tax.
The policy also calls for “graduating VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) by fuel efficiency and increasing rates for fossil fuel vehicles overall“, which amounts to another tax hike on rural drivers. Still, when you’ve got a rural by-election looming, it’s best not to let your own policies get in the way…
Gags about Star Wars and Love Island all in the space of about five minutes. At one point he said Boris Johnson had given the UK “the ick”, a cringeworthy attempt to use a Gen Z phrase co-conspirators will have to look up on Urban Dictionary. Sir Keir’s obviously taking the “boring” accusations to heart. Guido got sent this from a CCHQ source mid-PMQs:
Not sure the force was strong with Starmer this afternoon…
Sir Keir’s PMQs performance today was less of an own goal, more like a player running up to take a penalty and then missing the ball. There weren’t very high expectations for the Labour leader going into the session this lunchtime, just a case of pouring salt in the wounds opened by Tory MPs on Monday, and yet he decided to do a very low energy set of questions on health funding. Looking down the timeline, it looks like LOTO may have to accept a misstep today…
It put Guido in mind of that 2018 performance from Jeremy Corbyn who was the subject of mirth when he failed to stick the dagger in May over Brexit, instead wasting six questions on buses.
When Ian Blackford compared him to the Black Knight from Monty Python, Boris heckled Monday was “not even a flesh wound!”