The nasal knight thinks he’s a rock star these days – but, with a flash of understated anger, Rishi unexpectedly turned the tables...
HOW did that happen? At the end of a PMQs that everyone had expected to be a slaughter, resilient little Rishi Sunak was given a double thumbs-up by Jeremy Hunt and won lusty shouts from his slightly amazed, blinky-eyed supporters.
Tory backbenchers leaving the chamber via the side door were full of burble and buzz.
It was the noise you get at a football ground when the ball somehow ricocheted into the visitors’ net off one player’s nose and another’s kneecap before the referee swallowed the pea in his whistle in surprise. A cup tie had gone against predictions.
Sir Keir Starmer was so confident when he arrived for the session that he raised a forearm in acknowledgement of Labour hosannas. Thank you, fans! The nasal knight thinks he’s a rock star these days. He’ll soon be signing his autograph on teenyboppers’ hotpants, with Wes Streeting first in the queue.
Slick- haired Rishi, entering, was cheered frantically by Conservatives but at that point the acclaim sounded brittle, overdone, close to tearful hysteria. The session was delayed while we were told that the speaker of the Czech parliament was in the VIP gallery. She looked like a film star and rose to absorb the waves of entirely non- existent applause. Clapping is not a thing in the Commons, you see.
Then the filth started. Things were unusually personal from the off. Sir Keir – whose knighthood has been excised from Hansard and is never mentioned by Mr Speaker – flew straight to mocking insults. The Labour leader capitalised on Sir Simon Clarke’s overnight call for Mr Sunak to resign. Of Sir Simon (Con, Middlesbrough South), since you ask, there was no sign.
Mr Sunak did not take the ordure with his usual technocratic nonchalance. He whacked Sir Keir right back, noting ‘this is the man who takes the knee, wanted to abolish the monarchy and still doesn’t know what a woman is’.
Fight, fight! Sir Keir snapped that the Government was ‘a one-man Polyanna show’. Mr Sunak came up to the net and volleyed that Sir Keir KC had chosen to represent a now-proscribed terror group and later campaigned to stop the deportation of foreign prisoners.
With the Tories it was ‘party first, country second,’ complained Sir Keir, who said he himself had changed his party. ‘Yet more sniping from the sidelines!’ bellowed the PM. He was soon quoting a remark from Leftie comedian Steve Coogan about Sir Keir always changing his mind. ‘He’s not a leader, he’s a human weathervane,’ yelled Mr Sunak. That riposte didn’t take off. It sounded rehearsed. A better moment for Mr Sunak was to follow shortly.
THE House was watching all this with noisy relish. Amateur Welsh tenor Sir Bobby Buckland, the Harry Secombe of Swindon South, formed his mouth into a perfect roundel and yodelled euphoniously.
Sir Michael Fabricant (Con, Lichfield) danced in his seat, his shoulders doing a boogie-woogie. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, North East Somerset) was so excited, one of his eyebrows actually rose an eighth of an inch. By Mogg standards, that’s Friday disco-night shape-throwing.
Labour MPs were mooing and the fleainfested press gallery wriggled with glee. Our Czech visitor just gawped at it all in astonishment, like a diner at Wilton’s being shown the bill.
Fortunes shifted after Sir Keir’s sixth question, which lasted almost a minute and a half (far too long) and included the word ‘ sh**show’. The Commons clerk reacted with immediate distaste. Mr Speaker did not object but this was not the first time Sir Keir has used coarse language at the despatch box. I’m not sure it does him any favours.
The moment Mr Sunak sealed the session came when Tahir Ali (Lab, Birmingham Hall Green) outrageously accused him of having ‘ the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands’ in Gaza. With nicely understated anger, almost Blairish in its ruthlessness, the PM retorted: ‘That’s the face of the changed Labour Party.’
Big, big yelp of approval from the Tory benches. Unexpected.