Rubbish: PMQs 11th February 2025

As the Prime Minister rose both sides of the House cheered. “I did not think that the Prime Minister was so popular on the Opposition Benches,” remarked the Speaker. Cheering and jeering have similar sounds but different meanings. Tory hands flapped at him while David Lammy and Rachel Reeves smirked.

As Quentin Letts describes, the mood became sombre as Kemi Badenoch laid into Sir Keir on the key people the PM has been “throwing under the bus” including Matthew (now Baron) Doyle (another of Blair’s old team) who had campaigned for a sex-offender Scottish Labour councillor yet was still given a peerage. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey finally triggered Starmer into a rant (says Letts) by referring to the same matter.

How embarrrassing for Labour, whose activists “have been branded “paedo lovers” on the doorsteps.” Government backbenchers must be seething inside, knowing that they had to hang together or would hang separately in the snap General Election that Starmer threatened in order to force his Cabinet back into line behind him.

Yet the Puritans may console themselves with the prospect of another three years of keeping the Tories out and only another three months before a local elections debacle that will likely trigger a leadership challenge. One more push! …. and then, as with Mohammed’s prophecy of his legacy, a battle of seventy-two sects will begin, each convinced it is the only correct one.

This is why, as Blair and his horrid crew understood, you cannot unite the Left, you have to dominate it. Zealous Muslim convert Jody McIntyre tells us:

“When Morgan McSweeney first joined Labour in 2001, he was assigned to Peter Mandelson’s Excalibur database, used to monitor “internal political rivals”. Mandelson would show Labour MPs their “Excalibur printouts” and threaten them with action if they stepped out of line.”

According to McIntyre, who in 2024 very nearly ousted Jess Phillips from her traditionally rock-solid Labour seat, “an MP who served on Labour’s frontbench has passed [JMc] details of an unknown and unelected group who “rule with a rod of iron” and are fighting to retain control of the party.”

McIntyre names Baron Doyle as one of McSweeney’s “inner circle” and goes on to allege “Starmer’s Labour is now infested with sexual predators + child rapists.” The pro-Palestinian activist is clearly hoping to widen the gap between Labour and the Islamic political faction that is developing as the Left Balkanises.

Did we miss an opportunity to stabilise the electorate when rejecting the Alternative Vote in the 2011 referendum? “Her party is dying,” said Sir Keir to Kemi; that makes two, at least.

In connection with the Mandelson affair Ed Davey’s second question urged the adoption of the “Hillsborough law” imposing “a duty of candour for anyone and everyone in public office.”

A British glasnost would be welcome, especially since the tendency appears to be in the opposite direction, what with the Goverment’s cancelling its agreement with Courtsdesk and so making searches of criminal proceedings (and e.g. collation of migrant crime data) more difficult. Debating this on Tuesday the Minister, Sarah Sackman, dressed it up as a procedural matter based on data protection.

The SNP’s Stephen Flynn made transparency a personal matter for Starmer, asking him in relation to Baron Doyle to release the House of Lords Appointments Commission’s confidential advice given to the PM “on the propriety of the proposed nominees.” Sir Keir replied “I have made my position clear. The right hon. Gentleman knows how the system works” (convention of confidentiality, another procedural escape hatch) and typically for him launched a distracting counterattack against the SNP. PMQs as Blind Man’s Buff.

Isn’t procedure wonderful? It can give you a monstrously unrepresentative majority in Parliament based on the technicalities of a flawed electoral system.

Independent Ayoub Khan lightened the mood when his question on the Birmingham bin strike began “Rubbish is building up right beneath my very nose.” There was general laughter.

Yet there is so much else building up under our noses that is not being cleared up.