A keynote of the modern British Left is arrogance.
We see this with PMQs. Blair (so busy) cut their frequency to once a week, though not the total length. Starmer (when present) maintained the length but filled them with his tangential nonsense and scorn for the Opposition.
Sir Keir has gone even further, beginning sessions with some time-wasting preamble. The Speaker was heard to fume “never again!” on 3rd December yet two weeks later the PM inserted a disgusting slur:
“I have a little festive advice to those in Reform: if mysterious men from the east appear bearing gifts, this time report it to the police.”
The reference is of course to Reform’s former leader in Wales Nathan Gill, jailed in November for taking Russian bribes; but as an MEP, not in the yet-to-be created Reform Party and six-plus years ago. However there is no obvious opportunity to riposte to such rubbish when so placed.
Presumably it was scripted for Starmer by some snickering midwit. The average IQ of Labour’s front bench has been a matter of concern for some time but one wonders about the intellectual and moral decline among civil servants who resort to lazy smears as part of the nation’s formal discourse.
Reform’s representation in the House is so small despite its 4.1 million votes in the last General Election that its Party is given very little chance to submit questions or counter sinister insinuations. Nigel Farage retreated to the Visitor’s Gallery last October in protest against the shadow-banning and has done so again now, putting his queries via Times Radio instead.
Labour’s discourtesy manifests itself elsewhere. Previous administrations have broken protocol by releasing information to the press before informing Parliament, but Starmer’s government has already repeated the offence several times. Speaker Hoyle has reprimanded it twice over Budget leaks, and again in relation to last year’s Strategic Defence Review.
The rudeness extends to what one might call courtesy and service issues. On 10th December there were three post-PMQs Points of Order: Rachel Blake (Lab) complained of Chris Philp’s filming interviews in her constituency; her colleague John McDonnell said that a week had gone by and the Secretary of State for Justice had yet to reply to a letter sent on behalf of MPs re the Palestine Action prisoners’ hunger strike; Jeremy Corbyn (Ind) asked Hoyle’s assistance in getting a Minister to make a statement to the House on that issue. The Speaker said he could not control the agenda but hinted at alternative procedural strategies with which McDonnell and Corbyn would be familiar.
One senses a government getting out of hand, impatient of attempts to call it to account. When you simply know you are right and you have an overwhelming majority in the House, why bother answering malcontents, swatting such pesky flies?
Yet Starmer’s sense of entitlement rests on a crumbly foundation - two-thirds of the seats but only one-third of the ballots. To what extent can one pursue a radical agenda with so little support? The PM thinks like a lawyer yet a criminal court could not convict a defendant on the basis of four jurors giving a verdict of guilty against the opinion of the other eight.
And there are matters of such grave import that referenda might be justified - e.g. compulsory ID and the abandonment of Chagos, neither of them covered in the 2024 Manifesto. Not that a manifesto is binding in any case.
We are beginning to wonder to what extent Westminster’s rule is universally accepted as legitimate. The behaviour of the party now in power is in danger of raising that question. Its advisors may have forgotten the lessons learned from the stiff autocracy of the Stuart monarchs.
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