Prime Minister’s Questions isn’t really about scrutiny. The thankless but important task of holding the government to account takes place in dusty committee rooms and low-key debates. Instead, PMQs is about theatre, boosting the morale of your backbenchers, testing out attack lines and ensuring the prime minister is on top of her brief.
For that reason, its aftermath is less about who won and who lost, and more often an insight into what the main party leaders are thinking. But we can throw that all out today. That was just weird.
Where to even start? Liz Truss’s homage to Peter Mandelson? The “I’m a fighter, not a quitter” line (go on, click, it’s a noughties classic) would work better if Mandelson didn’t quite literally later quit the Commons to become EU Trade Commissioner (having already twice left the government).
Or how about the fact that every time Truss made a spending commitment, most notably on the pensions triple lock, all eyes turned to the chancellor, sitting next to her, to see his reaction. After all, he is running economic policy.
The confusion, the U-turns, they would at least make sense for a nation that had fallen into complacency following a long period of uninterrupted economic and diplomatic successes. That is not where we find ourselves.
Instead, Britons continue to grow poorer. Inflation hit a record high of 10.1% in September, largely driven by a staggering 14.6% rise in food prices. The early closure of the energy support package next April is likely to stoke inflation further, its precise impact dependent on the wholesale price of gas at that time.
Meanwhile, the Resolution Foundation think tank reckons that even if benefits are uprated by inflation – something Truss conspicuously declined to confirm at PMQs – 2023-24 is projected to be a “catastrophically bad” year for poorer households. How bad? It could well deliver the biggest fall in real income on record, wiping out the gains accrued in the previous 20 years.
Viewed through a purely partisan lens, ensuring Liz Truss remains Tory leader for as long as possible must surely be Labour’s priority. Just look at those approval numbers.
And given the relative calm in the markets married with the lack of a consensus replacement, they may get their wish. But that will come as little respite to millions of people bracing themselves for the next bill.
In the comment pages, Defence Editor Robert Fox says Britain must urgently review its defence in light of Putin’s nuclear threat. While Culture Editor Nancy Durrant suggests one simple change from her local supermarket that could help food banks.
And finally, New York restaurateur Keith McNally caused a stir after calling out James Corden for bad behaviour. Here, London hospitality staff share their worst-ever experiences with customers.
