Stage set for high drama but no sign of anyone going ‘unto the breach’
‘The lady doth not protest at all: she simply withers with a contemptuous flash of the eyes’
YOU know it’s going to be a good PMQS when it opens with Giles Watling, the thespian MP for Clacton. The Rs in “Honourable Friend” took a rolling, which they could not have seen for some time, the word “inflation” was declaimed as if it were the name of a lesser character in Titus Andronicus.
“Today’s figures show that our plan is working,” was the Prime Minister’s stock response – but if it is, someone should tell the pollsters, his party colleagues, oh, and his own face: the PM’S glower was back – Banquo Sunak returned to haunt the feast!
Sir Keir clearly sensed this and launched into a bloviation about the failures of the past decade or so, culminating in a demand to know if the PM is scared of an election.
Sunak jolted up – he’d prepared properly for this one – “I thought he’d be grateful,” he said. “He’s now actually got time to come up with a plan for Britain.” The Labour leader, slumped back on his bench at an angle, wobbled his head, and looked like a dropped Mr Whippy. “We’re all looking forward to finally seeing it,” ended the PM with a big grin. “Oh we’re ready. Just call it,” said Sir Keir, weirdly trying to sound a bit “street”. We’d moved from Titus to a beat version of Twelfth Night.
Sir Keir, clearly embarrassed by his lapse into Straight Outta Compton, quickly returned to his usual, more nasal delivery as he reached for theatrical metaphors – the “tragedy” of the PM’S position on the Rwanda policy, his own MPS holding “the sword of Damocles” above his head, “literally, in the case of the Leader of the House”. This reference to Penny Morduant’s rumoured leadership ambitions elicited an ice cold stare from the MP for Portsmouth North. The lady doth not protest at all: she simply withers with a contemptuous flash of the eyes.
The pseudish badinage continued but it was more Henry VI, Part II than Hamlet. In his final speech, Sir Keir pretended to address the Tory party on behalf of Banquo Sunak: “To say to them what he wishes he could.” He accused the Tories, in turn, of having no plan – admittedly a bit rich from one whose policy platform is about as well fleshed out as Yorick’s skull.
The old ham sat down and the PM went on his counter attack. The problem was that, once again, it consisted of him suggesting his party, now in power for 14 years, were the candidates of vitality and change. Audiences will only swallow so much.
Some light relief from the “Two Gentlemen of Westminster” was provided by Stephen Flynn, the porter of Hell gate. Well, technically the leader of the SNP in Westminster but one suspects the time spent with dubious characters is pretty similar.
“Which of the born-again Thatcherites on Labour’s front bench would be best suited to replace him [Sunak] as leader,” Flynn asked, to the first genuine laugh of the afternoon, including one from Rishi Sunak.
To elicit one of those these days is impressive indeed.
However, for all the stagecraft we were no closer to finding out when the parties will finally go unto the breach once more. That election seems destined to be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.