His first steps. The new Prime Minister’s first outing at PMQs. His proud supporters urging him on, longing for him to succeed, willing him from one point to another without bumping his head, crashing into the furniture, falling into the fire. Admirers held their collective breath as Sir Keir left one point, looked around for another, failed to find anything and bravely set out anyway in that drunken waddle that toddlers use to get around.
In answer to Calum Miller’s Question 1 on Thames Water’s committing 2,600 hours of sewage crimes the PM toddled out with, “I thank him for raising this important issue in relation to [checks notes] . . . water.”
Yes, this prime ministerial thing can’t be as easy as it looked when Rishi was doing it.
The Tory leader – self-deprecating, relaxed, amused – showed us how it can be done, pirouetting from one topic to another with a dancer’s ease. Rishi was so conciliatory, so helpful it was a while before we realised how expertly he was baiting the PM.
He asked six quick questions referring to – long range Black Sea weapons; Germany’s willingness to gift Ukraine missiles; the legal basis for deploying oligarch assets in the war; the Tempest fighter jet program; NATO membership for Ukraine and diplomatic negotiations with Saudi Arabia – and with relentless consensuality offered Keir support at every turn.
By this display of co-operation, Keir was deprived of the only reliable piece of furniture he had to hold onto (“Fourteen years of Tory failure!”) and staggered around from empty clause to banality to vacuous sentences wihich stopped without ending. Often, he found himself saying he was in “whole-hearted agreement” with the Conservative leader. He was even charmed into agreeing he would send British troops into battle without consulting Parliament.
How dismayed his new Labour MPs must be by these exchanges will only become clear in time. They are not wholly enchanted with their leader even now, as Pete Wishart pointed out. That which was unthinkable last week had come to pass. A King’s Speech rebellion and the six-month suspension of Labour’s seven lefty lodestars. Add to that brutality to friends, this cringing agreement with and gratitude to the ancient enemy – that must grate on backbench nerves. Rishi, frankly, has never been more effective.
Perhaps the PM will find his feet. Or maybe the whirlwind of events will make that impossible. Does the old prosecutor have the suppleness, the quickness of spirit, the lively, Blairite ability to pivot away from losing propositions?
The “tough decisions” he is shaping up to make are based on an already exploded claim – that the crisis was “more severe than we thought when we went through the books” (the famously open books).
Additionally, he is still saying that renewable electricity will mean cheaper bills. He is still saying that he is going to smash the criminal boat gangs. And still saying he will work with communities to build 1.5 million houses.
At what point will Keir realise that renewables are expensive, that the gangs are unbeatable and that the fracking protesters are quietly waking up to a whole new project of civil disobedience and anti-development resistance?
If he hasn’t promptly become a convincing prime minister, what are the chances he’ll evolve into a leader that can win a civil war?
Sunak took the opportunity of a rather dull first PMQs under the new Labour government to make yet another self-deprecating remark about leading the Tories into historic defeat. Wishing the GB Olympic team well, he lamented:
“I have no doubt that after years of training focus and dedication they’ll bring back many gold medals although to be honest I’m probably not the first person they want to hear advice from on how to win…”
Prompting a few laughs and many mocking “awwws” across the House. Burying the Tory party isn’t exactly a record of which to be proud…
The clapping started as soon as he crossed the bar. He stood there on the floor of the House looking round the room, over to the Speaker, and then up into the galleries, acknowledging the applause and the applauders. They were all on their feet – MPs, public, even some of the journalists – a universal standing ovation. Not even Betty Boothroyd got one of those. Your sketch writer is uneasy at public displays of affection in the Chamber and to tell the truth certain parts of it got a little blurred, around at the sight of his three-year-old daughter in a sky-blue summer dress alert in her mother’s lap, clapping the NHS staff when they had their turn. She will be a strong candidate for Best Little Girl in the World when the judging takes place.
Craig took it all without humility or arrogance, with great balance, and some humour. He apologised for being the cause of so much rule breaking. Such as clapping. And the trainers he wore because “shoes wouldn’t go over the plastic feet, and the jacket wouldn’t go over the bionic arm.” He thanked the Speaker for coming to visit him in hospital. “The rest of the hospital thought I must be dreadfully ill because they said, ‘That guy’s got the funeral director in already.’” (Much laughter)
“The other person I’d like to thank is the Prime Minister. He’s been with me throughout. He hasn’t advertised it but he’s been to see me multiple times. And that shows me the true depth” of his character.
Also, his wife who visited him “every single day of those many months.” And the NHS staff in the public gallery “who took me from close to death to where I am today,” finishing with: “I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with the two surgeons who took this lot off.” (Much more laughter)
Therein was the spirit of England many of us thought had been extinguished by Covid and lockdown and its long consequences. He is a living symbol for a post-election Conservative Party – he has faced a life-threatening disease, endured excruciating, life-preserving surgery with patience, resilience, and courage to come back in altered form, stronger – and considerably more popular – than before.
So, a little sunshine for the NHS accompanied by a thorough rinsing from the principals.
Keir in the role he is rehearsing week by week – that of premier in waiting – started with two false steps. In the first he attached himself to the hero of the hour, telling him “politics is about service” and that he (Craig) had a deep sense of service.
And a second pious sentimentalism came hard on its heel, that “we remember everyone who lost their life in the Manchester bombing.”
I’ll give him a quid if he can name three of them.
But then, more sympathetically, he got onto the infected blood report and let off a volley at the public services, his voters, his core constituency. “We will only make progress if we finally tackle the lack of openness, transparency and candour that Sir Brian Langstaff identified.” And it wasn’t just in Health – not after Hillsborough and Horizon and many others – this rot has affected “every part of the British state.”
Keir has said with an openness, transparency and candour we don’t always associate with politicians, “I will say anything to get elected,” so this might be a strategic statement of Changed Labour. He has sensed that the time is right to start bashing up quangos and publicly-funded agencies. And not just because the public are getting sick of protecting public services. He may also have realised the public service has declared independence and will need recolonising if he, as prime minister, is to get anything done that he wants done.
He’s going to have to take on the civil service somehow, that cult with their cultish mentality (if cultish is the word that springs to mind).
In that regard, Keir may, just possibly, be ahead of the PM who displayed so little ambition to do anything useful that he said, “We will make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
What, never? Or hardly ever? Or is it happening even as he spoke? Remember that since 1970 the NHS has killed more women and children than Hamas and the IDF combined – current body count is more than 20,000 a year.
There were heckles of Changed Labour! Changed Labour! when Zarah Sultana dissociated or at least distanced Hamas from her remarks on the violence in Gaza. She referenced the munitions and components supplied to Israel by Britain “which are raining down hell”.
Hell is what defines the Middle East. It is a selective astigmatism that doesn’t see it. The BBC suffers from it as much as Ms Sultana, obituarising the Butcher of Iran responsible for close to 100,000 hangings, stonings, beheading as “Mainly avuncular.”
The leader of the SNP asked a cute question, recalling the country’s darling, in her heyday. Would the PM be calling an election today, or was he “feart?” Mrs T had it as “frit” – but like Eskimoes and snow, the Scots have many words to describe their deep-fried environment.
Rishi took his response from a previous leader’s playbook – will-he/won’t-he name the day – and teased his listeners with “the second half of the year”. Gordon Brown’s election strategy was only partially successful, if memory serves.
But there can’t be a summer election called, surely? What could persuade Number 10 that is a good idea? The only possibility is one of Robert Conquest’s laws. That the best way to interpret the actions of any institution is to imagine that it has been secretly taken over by a cabal of its enemies.
Whether June, July or December, all Tories have to rely on is the Mackinlay Spirit. May it serve them as well as it has served him.
SNP MP Stephen Flynn took the opportunity to tap into the SW1 rumour mill and ask Sunak whether he will call an election today. Chatter is flying about a statement at 5 p.m. Downing Street has still not killed the rumour – not even to the BBC…
Sunak responded:
“Spoiler alert: there is going to be a general election in the second half of this year.“
Not slowing speculation…
