It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Commons backbenches were enlivened on Wednesday by pink outfits, ties and lapel ribbons.
Curiously, it was never raised by the party leaders at Prime Minister’s Questions. Pity, too, the parliamentary reporters who came to PMQs armed with a notebook full of (tortured) Taylor Swift-themed puns.
Surely Rishi Sunak, or another opposition leader, would skewer Sir Keir Starmer over the latest revelations about freebie-gate, a row that the PM just can’t shake off.
Haters are gonna hate, but it’s been a cruel summer for the Labour leader since the election. How soon he’s turning into an anti-hero in the polls.
Is he guilty as sin for preaching purity in politics to the erring Tories while indulging in some private me-time with the pop star at Wembley during her Eras world tour?
Plenty of embarrassment, therefore, to bring up for the Tory leader. But Mr Sunak had more weighty matters on his mind at PMQs, in advance of a visit to Beijing by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
He pressed Sir Keir on whether Mr Lammy would broach China’s latest attempts to intimidate Taiwan, its sanctions on critical British MPs, and the legal persecution of newspaper mogul (and dual UK citizen) Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong.
Yes to all that, the PM responded, before appearing to be wrong-footed when he was asked by Mr Sunak why the new Government had halted implementation of a Conservative plan to enforce registration of foreign agents.
“That isn’t correct,” Sir Keir insisted, to astonished looks on the Tory front-bench. In August, the Home Office confirmed that it is “no longer expected” that the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme will come into force this year.
However, the Conservatives are not exactly blemish-free when it comes to allegations of foreign influence in UK politics. Sir Keir went off on an angry tangent about how the Government’s job was to fix “14 years of Tory failure”.
Sometimes the Labour leader appears to be on a robo-call script. It’s been three months since the election but yet again he referred to Mr Sunak as “the Prime Minister”.
Unlike Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick, at least Sir Keir was able to identify the new England manager. That would be Thomas Tuchel, the first German to hold the country’s hardest job.
Mr Sunak has just over a fortnight left before he can hand the Tory leadership over to Mr Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch.
The wealthy former hedge fund investor denies any plans to escape the UK for his ocean-view home in California - where he was spotted at a Taylor Swift concert last year.
Sir Keir meanwhile wanted the second hardest job in the country, so is in no position to say so long, London.
