Before we begin…
We need a new approach to Prime Minister’s Prevarications.
According to Dominic Cummings Sir Keir can’t do the job and doesn’t want to which might explain why he contents himself with reading out the file prepared for him by the Cabinet Office (led by Sir Chris Wormald) which also scripts the ministerial meetings and conclusions in Number Ten.
I shall therefore redact the PM’s jargon-generator replies with his tedious reiteration of Labour aspirations and alleged achievements; also his “tu quoque” reminders of the failures of previous (faux) Conservative administrations. Since 1997 we have had fourteen years each of Red and (?) Blue and just look at us now. If France fails before we do the IMF may not have enough to bail us out.
Recently I asked a correspondent “has HMG ever actually averted a foreseeable catastrophe?” The latest he could come up with was Harold Wilson’s refusal to join in on the Vietnam debacle.
Maybe only calamity can save us; that is, force a fundamental reset rescuing our liberty and sovereignty. One blogger has suggested that Angela Rayner is “the disaster we need” though her Multiple Houses of Single Occupancy affair may have tarnished her. To a limited extent, that is: typical of the Government’s litigious approach to embarrassment is the court order conveniently preventing her from revealing all. At least it wasn’t a super-injunction like the 2023 (Tory) one covering up the import of 24,000 Afghans.
Who else might take over, other than Rayner? Not the Weeping Clown or the Mastermind Champion, surely. The Health Secretary is getting airtime at the moment (free speech post-Linehan, cracking down on Monster and Red Bull.)
Yet Streeting may be showing his hand too soon. The PM does not like the Westminster part of the job but there are always summits like Davos to stroke his ego. His mentor Blair once advised David Miliband “to go around smiling at everyone and get other people to shoot them;” watch out, Wes.
In fact it would be almost refreshing to hear direct from the organ-grinder if only Parliamentary etiquette would allow him to stand-in. It would also be a chance for ACLB to purge his contempt of the House when he assured MPs that Iraqi WMDs existed despite his not having any proof.
For now though we must make do with the self-styled “hard bastard” who could only bleat feebly when challenged in the Oval Office about free speech and his friend the Petulant Prince of London.
And so to our muttons, shorn of some deviation and repetition…
The PM responded to a question on the plague of gambling outlets by promising extra powers for local councils.
The Leader of the Opposition (acronym LOTO - like Lotto but with less chance of winning) asked about ‘Three Pads’ Rayner; the PM noted that the Deputy PM had asked the court to lift the confidentiality ruling in relation to her son (a “difficult decision”) and referred herself to the ethics adviser (”the right thing to do.”) He was “proud” to sit next to her.
On government borrowing he cited the UK’s “highest growth in the G7” (without adjusting for growth in debt.) To Ms Badenochs’s quoting the MPC’s judgment that “we are heading for an economic crash” he countered that she was “talking down the country.” Perhaps he should use his lawyerly powers to make bankruptcy illegal.
When LOTO spoke of the harmful effects of the PM’s economic plans he came back with how much more the Government was spending for working families, school breakfast clubs and nurseries.
Labour’s Paulette Hamilton loyally invited the PM to congratulate the success of a toy company in Birmingham and to boast of Labour’s “small business plan.”
Next up was the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey. He does not sport a conventional acronym but given what Google’s AI terms the “perception of inconsistency in Liberal Democrat policies between local and national levels” perhaps we should invent one for his party; say, ATTAM (All Things To All Men)? They now have a record 72 seats, well up from the minibus-filling fifteen before the last General Election; but largely they have the Conservative collapse to thank for that. How many more might they have scavenged had the two major parties not colluded to prevent the introduction of the Alternative Vote in the 2011 referendum?
Would Labour ever have become a major party at all if Lloyd George’s 1911 National Insurance Act had been allowed to flower into a sustainable Welfare State and our mad rulers had not declared war on Germany three years later, thus starting the prolonged and progressive wreckage of our economy? Now, the Lib Dems are usually a mere thumb-sized grumbling appendix in the body politic.
Mr Davey called on the PM to ask President Trump to help end the Gaza conflict (ignoring Hamas’ determination, as made clear in their 1988 Covenant and never since disavowed, to kill every Jew in Israel.) Starmer gave him a dose of "shoulda, woulda, coulda" by reminding ATTAM that he (Davey) had boycotted the State banquet for Trump. There, that was a helpful reply!
Later, Labour’s Bill Ribeiro-Addy spoke of the ‘Global Sumud flotilla’ and a British boat, both of which were prevented from breaking an Israeli blockade in their attempt to deliver aid. The PM’s reply was that land routes were the only way to deliver aid on the scale required; he nelected to say (see this claim) that huge quantities have already been sent that way; nor did he make reference to allegations that Hamas has long been stealing and withholding supplies and selling them to beleaguered civilians at extortionate prices. (Getting the truth - or at least, counter-narrative information - past our mainstream media seems such a challenge.)
ATTAM continued by asking the PM whether he would defy Reform’s and the Tories’ proposal to withdraw from the ECHR (which has been used so well by British lawyers in defeating our attempts to control mass immigration.) Starmer was dead set against withdrawal because it would encourage other countries to follow suit. Here he did not mention potential difficulties touching the Good Friday Agreement; but he also failed to remind us that Parliament has the power to override *in part* all other laws and conventions provided such an Act is sufficiently clear and specific.
If something is not done, it is simply because the will is lacking.
And so, only disaster can save us; if salvation is still then possible.
Richard Burgon (Lab) warned of the danger of electing “an extremist far-right Government”, giving the PM the opportunity to blackguard Reform’s “politics of grievance.” How dare the Oysters cry out to the Walrus and the Carpenter!
Sir Julian Lewis (Con) quoted Admiral Lord West as saying that the handover of Chagos was not, as the PM had claimed, “absolutely vital for our defence and intelligence.” Sir Keir’s reply? “I have the misfortune to disagree with him.” Why bother with reasoning when one can simply deny?
Roll on, disaster.
