Labour frontbenchers heap praise on Maggie

Steph Brawn and Hamish Morrison’s Worst of Westminster Diary

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Thatcherites in disguise

“IF Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to grow old.”

The chilling words of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1983, warning the public of the chaos that would ensue if Thatcher was voted back in as prime minister that year after unemployment rocketed to three million on her watch.

But fast forward 40 years and it’s becoming a bit of a struggle to find a Labour frontbencher who isn’t publicly praising the Milk Snatcher.

It started with leader Keir Starmer just before Christmas who said she had effected “meaningful change” in Britain and “set loose our natural entrepreneurialism” in an article directly appealing to Conservative voters to switch to Labour. It appears now that he had started a bit of a game of pass the parcel, with more layers of Labour praise for Thatcher emerging at pace this week.

The week started with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves saying a Labour government would be as radical as Thatcher and that she deserved praise for delivering “supply-side reforms” and rejecting Britain’s “managed decline”.

That was before shadow foreign secretary David Lammy described her as a “visionary leader”.

Labour MP Darren Jones also claimed Thatcher oversaw a “decade of national renewal for our country”.

The rhetoric is nothing short of astonishing. This was the woman who decimated mining heartlands across Scotland and the UK with many areas still suffering as a result of her disregard for the idea of community.

The mere mention of her name sends chills through the spine for so many. I remember one such incident at the dinner table when I was a teenager when I was talking about studying her politics for my A levels. One of my relatives who was a student when she was in power almost instantly left the room because of the nerve it struck.

If you had any doubts that Labour were becoming indiscernible from the Tories, I’m sure many of you will now be convinced. They’re begging the right to accept them and if that means heaping praise upon the woman who has been described as a contemporary villain at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, then so be it.

For those of you who are familiar with the musical Hamilton the line “if you stand for nothing Burr what’ll you fall for?” – in reference to former US vice president Aaron Burr – springs to mind.

Inside the lobby with Westminster reporter Hamish Morrison

AFTER Prime Minister’s Questions on a Wednesday, reporters file out of the press gallery and into a small room behind and above the Speaker’s chair to put questions to the Prime Minister’s spokespeople in what is known as a “lobby briefing”.

It typically begins with the official spokesman listing “diary” events – things the Government is doing in Parliament or out there in the real world.

To me, this rather dull portion has the ring of the brief news bulletin they give on Radio 4’s Today programme. It’s blunt and quite boring.

“Any questions on diary?” the spokesman asks, looking around a press pack of around 30 journalists.

Someone hopefully asks when the Rwanda Bill can be expected to wrap up in the Lords that evening.

“I couldn’t say when it would be done,” he replies, unhelpfully.

A few more attempts at planning the day ahead founder before he asks if we shall move onto topics.

In an unusually quiet week, the room falls silent. “Don’t all rush at once,” says the spokesman.

A few awkward laughs. The atmosphere at these sessions frequently triggers awkward laughter, the kind often elicited by job interviews.

Why the tension? There stands before hungry journalists a man with more insight into the real goings on behind the door of No 10 than any of them could hope to achieve.

His job is to be truthful – and if you don’t believe that, look what happened to Boris Johnson once it became apparent his spokesman was giving incorrect information to journalists at lobby.

But not too truthful. He could – if he became possessed by madness – stand there and spill out how the Prime Minister was really feeling.

“Yes, you’d be correct to characterise the PM as ‘bricking it’ for the local elections,” would be one I’d like to see.

“Yes, the PM is glad to see the back of Lee Anderson. Always thought he was a bit of a bore and promoting him to vice-chair of the party was a gamble that didn’t pay off,” is another possibility.

His job is to spin. This week the topic of inflation came up. Rishi Sunak has been keen to harp on about how his “plan is working” because the rate at which prices are going up has slowed.

Yes, the bar is low. But readers with any sort of working memory may recall the PM doing his utmost to say that soaring prices were nothing to do with him – a big war in Ukraine done it and ran away.

The Prime Minister’s party spokeswoman – who takes on questions of a more tribal political flavour – attempts to claim the Conservatives are responsible for falling inflation but not when it went up.

“I’ve been in these lobbies where – when inflation wasn’t falling so sharply – you definitely connected it to the Government record,” she swipes.

The spokesman intervenes to quote some brainy types at the OBR who said the Budget had helped to bring down inflation.

At some point, Andrew Marr asks whether the PM has any words for Leo Varadkar who has that day “decided after lots of plotting in his party, he is not the right person to take it into the General Election”.

This punctures the tension and gets a few titters. Sunak’s spokesman says “we wish him well”.

He’ll likely be giving the same message to the boss in a few months.