Don’t mention the war. The Tory benches were fairly subdued ahead of prime minister’s questions. As if everyone had been mainlining Mogadon. And that was just those who had made the effort to show up. Most had chosen to stay away and the larger Conservative MPs were encouraged to manspread. One way of filling the gaps.
There was little chat. Most seemed lost in their own worlds. A vortex of despair. Contemplating their own mortality. After last week’s local election results, there are many Tories who sense they are nearing their sell-by date.
Too comatose even to take much pleasure in the arrival of Penny Mordaunt. For a while at the coronation last weekend, they had briefly thought she might be the future of their party. It’s amazing what wearing a Star Trek costume and being able to hold a sword for 50 minutes can do for you. But now they had moved on. Flatlining into the future. Even the permanently cheerful Joy Morrissey looked depressed. She used to wipe the dandruff off Boris Johnson’s collar before every PMQs. Now she’s just lost. What she would give for a few more flakes.
Nor did anyone take much notice when Theresa May walked in dressed as a Power Ranger. Fancy dress is catching these days. The Maybot had been watching the illegal immigration debate in the Lords, where she could be seen shaking her head furiously as government minister Simon Murray droned on about the horrors of too many foreigners while insisting the UK was a compassionate country.
Weird to think that she is now on the socially liberal wing of the Tory party. As home secretary, she was seen as more in Suella Braverman’s camp. Still. God loves a sinner who repenteth and all that. Though May’s new persona as champion of the underdog might be rather more convincing were she ever to actually stand up and vote against the government. When push comes to shove, she always fades into the shadows. For the good of the party. If not the country.
There was more of a stir when Andrew Bridgen turned up and headed for the Lib Dem bench. (There is only one.) Imagine being too much of a fantasist for the Conservative party. Bridgen has now joined the Reclaim party – the last refuge of the terminally deranged.
The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, was horrified at Bridgen’s appearance and immediately upped sticks and moved further down the line, leaving a demilitarised zone between him and the interloper. Later Bridgen could be seen taking selfies with the Reclaim party founder, Laurence Fox, on the Commons terrace. The body language between them was excruciating. A partnership made in hell. The chances of this lasting for more than a couple of months are nil.
It was a cheerless Rishi Sunak who entered the Commons seconds before noon. Not to mention a cheerless chamber. No one could even be bothered to go through the usual performative motions of PMQs. Rish! seemed oddly out of sorts. As if he was struggling with the basic physics of his life. He has always been used to getting what he wants. By divine right. He thinks he’s part of the meritocracy. That good things keep happening to him because he’s more able and works harder than other people.
But now he’s been forced to confront an uncomfortable reality. That no matter how many hours he puts in, he’s still not a very good prime minister. That he keeps making promises on which he fails to deliver. That he is no more the saviour of the Tory party than Johnson or Liz Truss had been. Yet again, there was far less to him than met the eye. His only discernible characteristic is an existential dread.
This wasn’t the most cerebral of PMQs. Then again, it must be quite tiring asking Sunak sensible questions only for him to fail to answer them, or just make up a series of lies. So this time out, the Labour leader just decided to have some fun. To make a series of gags designed to cheer up his own MPs and make Rish! look a bit stupid and useless. Job done, because Starmer had actually written some decent gags with decent punchlines. I know. You can teach an old dog new tricks, after all.
Starmer opened by asking Sunak if he wanted to correct the unemployment figures to include the 1,000 Tory councillors who lost their seats. Boom. He followed up by congratulating him for actually doing as he promised by losing 1,000 seats. Boom. Then the finale. He was so useless, he had come third in a two-horse race to Truss. The lettuce had won. Now he had lost everywhere in the country. Boom. Rachel Reeves even ad-libbed one of her own as she corrected Starmer. Air Miles Sunak couldn’t have actually met any real people because he was holed up in his helicopter. Boom.
Um … er … Rish floundered, failing to think of a telling comeback. Labour didn’t have any policies. Then they did have some policies and they were going to cost £90bn. It was Labour who had broken the economy. Hello? This was desperate. Had he never heard of Truss? His own record as chancellor was hardly unblemished. Labour weren’t going to win a general election … because. Because they weren’t. And Starmer didn’t love the king as much as he did. No one did. He would kill to be Charles’s Groom of the Stool.
His biggest put-down was that Labour might form a coalition of chaos with the Lib Dems. He seemed genuinely spooked by the idea that two socially progressive parties might form an alliance. What he hadn’t considered was that most of the country would now accept any government other than the one they had. That they had had enough of incompetence, stupidity and brutality. A coalition couldn’t be any worse than the present. A category error to imagine it might be.
The Tories filed out shell-shocked. It hasn’t been a great week for them. Air Miles Rish! wandered round in circles waiting for a helicopter to take him somewhere. Anywhere. Over in the Lords, the archbishop of Canterbury was laying into the government for its heartlessness, its lack of morality. Yeah, whatever, said Michael Howard. Fuck godliness. God hated refugees. Let them die somewhere else. Welcome to the new Carolean age.
