The Big Dog barked back as Starmer’s hair jelly began to run
When Boris Johnson called Sir Keir Starmer a ‘lawyer not a leader’ at PMQs you’d have thought the PM had volleyed home the winner in the cup final.
The noise which erupted from the benches behind him would have shaken the Wembley arch. It was a crockery smasher, a pew rattler. Well, well, well. For now the Big Dog still bites.
Sir Keir – a barrister and former director of public prosecutions – did a double take. his eyeballs practically shot from their moorings. All that hair jelly began to run. he swivelled his head quizzically toward shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves as if to say: ‘Where on earth did that little rocket come from?’
For weeks he’s largely owned Boris at the despatch box but this time, out of nowhere, he’d been diddled in extra time.
Mr Johnson’s blow landed because it rang true. Sir Keir had just wasted another session dawdling over the legal minutiae of Partygate, sending the chamber into a snooze.
Rising energy bills, war in Ukraine – none were deemed worthy of so a much as a mentch. All Starmer cared about was who drank what and when at those Downing Street booze-ups.
Boris simply asked him to be patient until Sue Gray’s longawaited report was published.
Ah yes, that blasted report. Westminster’s Twitter army spent all morning getting themselves into a kerfuffle as to when it was finally going to land. ‘Tomorrow… no! This afternoon. Actually, later this evening.’
One overenthusiastic news channel spanked the monthly budget by sending a helicopter up over the Commons in anticipation of high drama. Think of the suitcases of grog that could have paid for.
The report never showed up of course. If Boris was nervy ahead of PMQs, he wasn’t showing it. Quite the opposite. Waiting behind the Speaker’s chair he was a bundle of suppressed energy, impatiently checking his watch, raring to get on with it.
Several yards to his left, Starmer stood motionless with a clipboard tucked purposefully under his armpit. For all the world, a pedant of a health inspector anxious to begin his pernickety prodding and probing.
For the second week running Boris came out flailing, accusing his opponent of being ‘relentlessly opportunistic’, someone who ‘flip-flopped from one side to the other’.
Starmer, meanwhile, set about exhibiting the new jocular repertoire he’s been cultivating. At one point he tried out a new laugh intended to express mockery at one of the PM’s responses. Instead it came out like one of Terry-Thomas’s trademark fruity cackles. Creepy.
Once again, Sir Lindsay hoyle had a busy afternoon. The Speaker was a little quick to brandish the headmaster’s cane at times, though decided against ejecting Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton Kemptown) for calling Boris a liar. Wise. Mr Russell-Moyle retains a washed-up diva’s yearning for the spotlight. his cries for attention are best resisted.
There was a momentary outbreak of levity when the SNP’s Ian Blackford attacked the Government’s forthcoming national insurance hike, which he described as hanging over voters ‘like a guillotine while they eat cake’.
It hardly needs pointing out that a trencherman of Mr Blackford’s standing can no more lecture anyone for raiding the sweet trolley than Rab C nesbitt advise people to lay off the Buckfast.
That magnificent waistline of his heaves and groans, shaped by troughs, no doubt, of well-
buttered tatties and the odd deep-fried Mars bar.
The irony of his remark was not lost on the PM, who immediately fell victim to an attack of the giggles.
Soon, his whole posse were at it. Boris’s PPS Andrew Griffith (Con, Arundel and South Downs) began choking on his facemask. Conor Burns (Con, Bournemouth W) turned redder than a bottle of Pichon-Longueville.
Eventually the PM composed himself. ‘Er, Mr Speaker, I don’t know who’s been eating more cake…’ More laughs.
As much as Boris’s MPs cheered him, support was by no means absolute. Nus Ghani (Con, E Sussex) who recently accused the chief whip of sacking her from the Cabinet for being a Muslim cut a glum figure.
Meanwhile, Johnny Mercer (Con, Plymouth Moor View), on an extended sulk since quitting his ministerial post, spent his time sighing and pinching his nose in agony.
As the PM exited the chamber, for the first time in a while he threw a clenched fist toward his backbenchers. Miss Gray’s report will determine how long that defiance can last.