The demob happiness was contagious on the Tory benches. Almost every MP can’t wait to get away for the six-week recess. To take their misery, their sense of futility, to some foreign beach where they can hide from the 40C heat. They should be careful what they wish for. Come the next election many will find they are relieved of making it to Westminster for good.
But just for today – make that just for half an hour – the Conservatives were prepared to put their existential futility on hold and try to live in the moment. To count their blessings while they still had them. Many Tory women seemed to have come as Barbie tribute acts. Certainly there was a greater profusion of pink on show than usual.
If there were plenty of Barbie lookalikes, there was only one Ken. Step forward Michael Fabricant. The man with the cascading plastic hair. More Ken than Ken himself. The only reason Ryan Gosling got the part in the new movie was because Mickey Fab declared himself unavailable. Mickey is an icon for Barbie fans everywhere. He’s got all the accessories. The Ken car. The Ken phone. Hell, he even talks like Ken. If you press the right button on his back.
There was even a warmish welcome for Rishi Sunak, who looked a bit lost as he turned up for his first prime minister’s questions in three weeks. Perhaps he was disoriented and couldn’t remember where he was supposed to sit. That funny bit of green opposite the dispatch box? That’s all yours, Rish!.
But the Tories cheered his arrival regardless. Not because they were overwhelmed with excitement that inflation had fallen by 0.2 percentage points more than expected. No one expects Sunak to get any thanks even if he does manage to cut inflation in half by the end of the year. The UK’s inflation is still far higher than that of the US and the eurozone and, besides, telling people to be grateful that things will become even more unaffordable a little more slowly is a tough sell.
No, the reason for the whoops at Sunak’s arrival was rather more mundane. It was just that he wasn’t the hapless Oliver Dowden. At least with Rish!, if you are patient enough and wait, you can occasionally find flickers of life on an EEG. With Olive it’s just a non-stop flatline. His synapses refusing to flicker. In Rish! there are primitive signs of sentient life. Something at least for his MPs to cling on to. Needs must.
Keir Starmer, meanwhile, is on a roll. Fresh from his anointing at the feet of Tony Blair the day before – Labour Past and Labour Present meeting in Labour Future – he feels untouchable. At least by Sunak. At PMQs he believes himself to be in complete control. Ready to go toe to toe with his opponent on any area. The economy, the NHS, climate change. You name it, Keir reckons he’s the boss.
What’s more, Sunak also knows it. He’s read the opinion polls. Turns out the more people get to know the prime minister, the less they like or trust him. He knows this isn’t going to end well. All he can do is manage the decline of the dog days of a Tory government. Which is not to say he likes it. He’s been brought up to believe he’s a master of the universe, and to be reminded of his weakness is a constant irritation. More than that, an acute pain. He can’t quite accept that this is happening to him. That a man he rates as his inferior always has the better of the exchanges.
The Labour leader kept it simple. Kept it classy. Rish! had promised to bring down hospital waiting lists. How was that going? Sunak mumbled. They were actually going up. But it was all the fault of the doctors on strike. Oh really, I could have sworn it might also have something to do with chronic underfunding of the NHS for the last 13 years. But what do I know? But even if it had been all to do with the strikes, you wonder why Sunak didn’t accept the recommendations of the rigged independent pay review boards earlier. Or why he now refuses to talk to the doctors. It’s almost as if it quite suits Sunak to have an excuse.
“Yeah but no but yeah but what would you do about the doctors?” said Sunak, sounding much like a 12-year-old. Starmer shrugged. Rish! had yet again failed to remember it was PMQs and that he was the PM. Not for long. Even the speaker joined in, observing that as Sunak liked to get away early from the Commons, it would help if he set about answering some questions.
Rish! visibly sulked. Starmer went in for the kill. Labelling the government’s NHS workforce plan unfunded. Which it is. And pointing out that most of the 40 new hospitals wouldn’t be either new or a hospital. Sunak was left clutching at air. He hadn’t even got round to checking Keir’s age. Calling him 61 not 60. Small, maybe. But these things count.
The SNP’s Stephen Flynn went in hard on there being no difference between Labour and the Tories on the two-child benefit cap. Starmer looked delighted. Just what he wanted. No one was going to get to accuse Labour of unfunded promises. There would be no repeat of 1992 when John Major sneaked home. Some Labour supporters might not like it but Keir had his eye on a bigger prize.
The rest of the session slipped by in something of a daze. Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Davis howled in outrage at Coutts closing Nigel Farage’s bank account on the grounds he was perceived as a racist and a grifter. Quite right. Who knew that Coutts had any principles at all? Other than a person’s right to be eye-wateringly rich. Mark Francois was furious about Tobias Ellwood’s video for package holidays with the Taliban. Probably the first time the entire Commons had been in agreement with Francois. Ellwood was nowhere to be seen. Probably dozing in a poppy field in Helmand.
Come the end, Sunak raced for the door. Things to do, foreign investors to sweet talk. Byelections to lose and a mayoral candidate to disown. The brand new idiot’s idiot. Sadiq Khan can chill now he will face Susan Hall. Ministers to reshuffle. To be replaced by who, exactly? It was all going fabulously well. Happy holidays, everyone.
Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
