A toxic week in politics got even more toxic at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday in what is shaping up to be a pretty toxic election year.
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer clashed a day ahead of the Rochdale by-election, and in the days after the Prime Minister suspended the Conservative whip from Lee Anderson.
It was left to SNP leader Stephen Flynn to try to raise the Commons’ sights to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza - but even there a fairly strong whiff of politicking is in the air as the Scottish nationalists bid to exploit Labour divisions.
Shouting from the Tory benches all but drowned out Sir Keir at times. But Sir Lindsay Hoyle was strangely reticent about calling the Commons to order. The Speaker is battling for his own political survival after infuriating the SNP over a Gaza ceasefire vote.
When he could be heard, the Labour leader had rich pickings to select after Mr Anderson’s incendiary attack on Sadiq Khan and after what he called Liz Truss’s “journey to the Wild West of her mind” during her conspiracy-fuelled tour of US studios.
Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and Enoch Powell all got name-checked as the Labour leader ranged over the right-wing voices raging for influence in Tory ranks in the contentious buildup to this year’s General Election.
Mr Sunak and his Cabinet frontbenchers are refusing to call out Mr Anderson for Islamophobia or racism, and are likewise refusing to condemn Ms Truss.
Building up his wider pre-election narrative, Sir Keir said the PM was too weak to provide convincing leadership as the Conservatives lurch into becoming “the political equivalent of the Flat Earth Society”.
Mr Sunak followed his own pre-election script in returning to Sir Keir’s willingness to serve under Jeremy Corbyn during Labour’s wars over antisemitism, and in highlighting the delay in suspending Labour’s candidate in Rochdale after audio emerged of Azhar Ali delivering an anti-Israel rant.
The PM said he had been quicker to deal with Mr Anderson. “I act on my principles, he hasn’t got any,” he shouted across the despatch box, accusing his Labour opposite number of being “spineless, hopeless and utterly shameless”.
Mr Ali no longer has official Labour endorsement in Rochdale but remains its candidate on the ballot paper. Former MP Simon Danczuk is on the Reform UK ticket, after he was suspended by Labour in 2015 for sending explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl. Political rabble-rouser George Galloway, formerly of Labour, is now the favourite to win Thursday’s by-election.
Labour frontbenchers say the best advice they can offer is for Rochdale voters to spoil their ballot.
The mudslinging surrounding the unedifying spectacle playing out in Greater Manchester is a worrying portent as the main parties sharpen their attacks for the election to come, most likely in the autumn. PMQs offered another preview of the toxicity building up, with months still to come.
