Prime minister’s question time existed, on this ordinary-looking spring day, to answer one monumental question that nobody in the chamber had even asked: are we, as the unsettlingly thuggish US vice-president, JD Vance, has said, “some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years”?
Keir Starmer’s opening statement, in which he soberly read out the names and ages of men “who fought for their country, for our country”, crescendoing: “Across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 642 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies,” was arguably his direct and quite lawyerly response. We may be random, chum, but we’ve definitely fought in a bunch of wars, which – wait, let me check my notes – you started.
