In the far corner of the Opposition benches where misfits and malcontents so often demonstrate their incorruptible independence from the party machines, Lee Anderson (Reform, Ashfield) and George Galloway (Workers, Rochdale) could be seen throughout PMQs, bobbing up and down like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
As in the nursery rhyme, they wanted to have a battle, but this the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, declined to allow, just as he last week declined to call the equally discontented Diane Abbott (Independent, Hackney North and Stoke Newington).
Hoyle instead presided over the weekly mock battle between those two pillars of the Establishment, Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.
Starmer asked why Sunak “is so scared to call an election” and Sunak retorted that by delaying the election he was giving Labour “time to come up with a plan”.
There was a lot of noise, which made it difficult to hear some of shafts of wit these two brave warriors hurled at each other. Starmer claimed the “sword of Damocles” hangs over Sunak, “literally in the case of the Leader of the House”.
Penny Mordaunt, famous in the silent role of sword bearer, sat to Sunak’s right, bearing her stony “we are not amused” expression. Even when the Chief Whip, Simon Hart, who was laughing, nudged her with his elbow, she declined to find the Leader of the Opposition funny.
There was about Starmer a faint hint of complacency, a sense that he is so far ahead he is bound to win whenever the election is called. His handlers should tell him to look less reminiscent of the over-confident Neil Kinnock in the final stages of the 1992 general election.
“The Prime Minister doesn’t even believe in the Rwanda gimmick,” Starmer asserted. Is it safe to use the word “gimmick” about this policy? Perhaps it is, or perhaps here too there was an off-putting hint of complacency born of moral superiority.
Beside Starmer sat Rachel Reeves, poised and relaxed and quite clearly a generation younger than her leader, at whose jokes she smiled as one might at a harmless uncle’s attempts at humour.
Starmer claimed, with another touch of triumphalism, that “half the Cabinet” are “lining up to replace” Sunak. There indeed sat not only Mordaunt but Kemi Badenoch, who had just reminded us, while taking questions as Minister for Women and Equalities, that she will not be pushed around, a quality which leads some Tories to think of her as a future leader.
But what if one day Starmer himself should falter? Who then would be perfectly placed to take over from him? Reeves said nothing, and smiled, and remained as self-possessed as Mordaunt and Badenoch.
The post Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Starmer shows a touch of over-confidence and Mordaunt is not amused appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Andrew Gimson
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