Alas, poor Olive! I knew him, Horatio. This should have been Oliver Dowden’s day, his chance to shine. The half-hour when he stepped out of the shadows into glorious sunlight. When the Tory party put aside its differences with one another and cheered him unconditionally. Laughed at his jokes. No one had ever done that previously.
Instead, Olive found himself consigned to the very back of the backbenches, where he could be found trying to engage Jeremy Wright – another outcast – in desultory conversation. They had both been the future once.
Now they were tolerated at best. An embarrassing reminder of a failed ancien régime. Imagine. Even Priti Patel and Mark Francois got frontbench jobs from Kemi. Westminster can be brutal. Up to a point. For men like Dowden there’s always forgiveness close at hand. A well paid non-exec job. Better still, an offer of a peerage. Arise, Lord Dowden. Olive could probably live with that.
We’ve reached the point where it feels as if Keir Starmer is out of the country for prime minister’s questions at least once a month. This week he has been in Rio, though not just for the G20. That had wrapped up in plenty of time for him to have made it back for PMQs. But why turn up jet-lagged to face some awkward questions on inflation, farmers and winter fuel payments when you could extend your stay for another half-day to catch a football match? Call it a perk of the job.
So on Wednesday we were back to deputy PMQs. Angela Rayner v A N Other. Kemi Badenoch has not got round to appointing a deputy – best to keep everyone guessing. Instead, she has let it be known she will spread her largesse around. Let various members of her shadow cabinet take turns at the dispatch box, depending on her mood.
First to be given an audition was Alex Who?, AKA the floppy-haired Alex Burghart to his friends and family. Though there are plenty of floppy-haired Tories to choose from. Telling you he’s also the shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster probably doesn’t help you narrow it down. He could be anyone.
Never mind. All you need to know is he absolutely aced it. Kemi could stop the Tories Haven’t Got Talent show right now and give Alex the job in perpetuity. No party leader could have asked more of a stand-in. The stuff that dreams are made of. Because Alex was – how to put this gently? – a wee bit crap. And that’s being kind. All of which was music to Kemi’s ears. The last thing any leader feeling her way into the job and not that great at PMQs herself would want is a dispatch box natural taking her place for a session. Now she’s found her man. Someone to make her look good when she’s out of the building. Men like Alex are gold dust. Everyone could do with an Alex in their lives.
Trying to guess how he prepared for his big day out is pointless. Never in his wildest dreams could Alex have aspired to such mediocrity. He was like a drama student cosplaying a Tory leader for an end of year sketch show. Just not as funny. You get the feeling that in his real life, Burghart is a relatively quiet, gentle man. An academic manque. Not so long ago he wrote a paper on the Mercian Polity 716 – 918. The Cnut’s guide. Whatever that was. A niche specialist subject even for Mastermind.
But what we got at PMQs was an Alex who was almost unrecognisable. Shouty. Almost deranged. Have I mentioned shouty? Poor Alex. Used to addressing an audience of fewer than five, he appeared to have never previously encountered a microphone. Rather than addressing Rayner – or the speaker – face to face, he leaned forward, twisting his face to a few inches away from the mic and started bellowing, so loud that the mic went into meltdown. Popping and feedback. It was all rather unnerving.
He began with what he imagined to be a killer one-liner. What was the government going to do about inflation? Only he soon found that Angela Rayner had handed him his arse on a plate, having pointed out that Burghart had been minister for growth in the Liz Truss government when inflation had been running at more than 11%. Alex never really recovered from that schoolboy error.
Not that Rayner had things entirely her own way. There was no easy way to explain away that inflation had risen, was forecast to rise further and that the government wasn’t necessarily able to do much about it. So she just kept prodding away at Burghart. Undermining him. She has a way of making posh boys feel very uncomfortable. Men seldom given to self-doubt suddenly find themselves unable to articulate a coherent sentence. Blush and bluster.
Alex gave up on inflation and turned to the farmers. Here Labour is also in some trouble, because blanket name-calling them all as millionaires who deserve to pay up is not really working.
Nor is the tactic of telling farmers they don’t understand the economics of farming and that their accountants and financial advisers have been lying to them. It sounds arrogant. Out of touch. As if the farmers are too dim to work things out for themselves. Which is why they needed the Treasury to talk down to them in words of one syllable. Only this appears to be the current government policy: to carry on telling the farmers there’s nothing for them to worry about until they run off into a corner and die. Rayner merely repeated this line. She didn’t sound convincing. Not that she was too bothered. This was all above her pay grade. Luckily, she only had Burghart to deal with.
The rest of PMQs passed peacefully enough, mainly with Labour MPs asking obsequious questions. Pointless. They need to find a voice.
Graham Stuart tried to get a few digs in at Rachel Reeves for rewriting parts of her CV. Here I take the moral high ground. I’ve never lied on a CV because I’ve never had a job where one was required. I started writing in my 30s because it was the only job I could think of where a 10-year gap could go unexplained. Something for MPs to consider.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
• This article was amended on 21 November 2024. In an earlier version, the subheading and picture caption referred incorrectly to “Andy”, rather than Alex, Burghart.
