Listening to Sir Keir, the public may have thought: What’s this idiot on about?
THE more we see of Sir Keir Starmer, the less estimable a spectacle it becomes. The man who reportedly has the next general election in the bag had a chance at PMQs to show himself leader of more than just a party. He ducked it.
With the country in anguish about domestic race tensions, foreign wars and a general uncoupling of our elite from reality, Sir Keir merely aimed low and childish.
He used his entire allocation of questions to make silly points about Liz Truss and Nigel Farage.
He seemed to find it funny. He rolled his tongue in his mouth, leaned on the despatch box like a pub raconteur and spoke of Ms Truss and Co as ‘tin foil hat’ conspiracists. This is an expression popular at Westminster but more likely, I suspect, to be a source of puzzlement to mainstream voters. The public, if listening, may have simply thought ‘ what on earth is this idiot on about?’
PMQs is an Opposition leader’s main platform in the week. It is his chance to assert priorities and demonstrate some inner mettle. Instead, Sir Keir kept focusing on a book-promotion speech Ms Truss recently made in America and on the odds of Mr Farage being readmitted to the Conservatives.
The sole satisfaction to be gained was that these trivial attacks allowed Rishi Sunak to smack Sir Keir with taunts about his own predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
We have heard such retorts before but they have never worked so well for Mr Sunak. Tory MPs got behind him with deafening roars.
The session had begun with a comical cameo.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker, announced that his Swedish counterpart was in attendance.
AT this a thickset, inky-haired fellow in one of the galleries sprang to his feet and raised a hand to absorb the applause – which, naturally, never came, because clapping is forbidden. Not that there would necessarily have been any.
The Speaker of Sweden was unfazed by this silence and proceeded to wave and grin manically to his many non- existent fans. At least advanced egomania is not unique to our parliament.
Quite what the Swedish chap made of the exchanges between Sir Keir and Mr Sunak, one can not imagine. Sir Keir opened by calling the Conservatives ‘the political wing of the Flat Earth Society’.
Mr Sunak suggested that immigration, inflation, the economy and energy might be more fruitful areas for discussion.
Sir Keir next accused the absent Ms Truss of ‘slagging off and undermining Britain’. Why was she not being disowned by the Tories? This allowed Mr Sunak to refer to Sir Keir’s long support for Mr Corbyn while ‘anti- Semitism ran rife’ in Labour. Mr Sunak concluded that Sir Keir was ‘spineless, hopeless and utterly shameless’.
On it went, with all the Starmer questions being about internal Tory matters. Such things may fascinate the spotty-boys of SW1 but, please, recent weeks have seen a poisoning of our politics.
Racial division has been paraded on our streets and airwaves and the Rochdale by-election has brought the seediness to a peak.
Sir Keir had a chance in the Commons to raise things to a higher plane. He could have enjoined Mr Sunak to unite against rabblerousers on Left and Right. The PM could have replied in kind.
Instead, we had this petty squabble. Starmer makes Ed Miliband look grown-up.
As for Mr Corbyn (Ind, Islington North), he may be thought a joke at Westminster but at least he used to try at PMQs to raise issues that mattered to his constituents.
There was a straightness about J. Corbyn, no matter what you think of his policies.
Sir Keir poses as a paragon of lawyerly gravitas but his performance here was shallow political nerdery, the sort of small-bore whataboutery heard from Westminster special advisers.
When Sir Keir sat down he engaged Rachel Reeves in ostentatiously blithe conversation.
Displacement activity? Surely even this most limited of political personalities must have realised how badly he had misjudged the moment.