You’d have thought there were worse things to be called than “boring” as leader of the opposition. Especially when so many people in the country identify the prime minister as an amoral, lying chancer. Boring may not be ideal – who wouldn’t prefer to be engaging? – but at least it conveys an air of dependability. Someone who can be trusted to deliver.
But Keir Starmer seems to have taken the description given to him by some of the shadow cabinet to heart and is hell-bent on proving that he is actually very interesting. Which is completely counter-productive. Because he then falls into the boredom paradox.
The more he tries to convince the world he’s a “fun kinda guy” the duller he seems to get. A rabbit-hole from which it’s hard to escape. Far better to embrace the dullness within. To make a virtue of it. To show that it’s OK to be authentically dull. Wear the cardie with pride. No one ever fell in love with Keir because of his charisma.
Still, the Labour leader had begun prime minister’s questions promisingly by keeping it short and sweet. How come the UK had the second lowest growth in the G20 with only Russia worst off? A sun-burnt Boris Johnson – we all know how much he likes to go to outdoor work events in No 10 – came back with an equally snappy answer. We were doing so badly because we had come out of the pandemic quickest.
It sounded like complete doggy. Mainly because it was. So here was Starmer’s chance to ridicule The Convict. To expose the toddler’s logic. Let’s get this straight. If Covid had gone on for another six months then our economy would be booming. Or maybe we’d be better off living under a permanent lockdown. To think that Johnson’s is the finest brain the Tory party can throw up to run the country.
Instead Starmer went into a tortured Star Wars gag about Boris being Jabba the Hutt, which died on its feet. As did his efforts to sound “down with the kids” by squeezing in a reference to Love Island, since it was clear he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. And saying that his backbenchers thought Johnson was the “Conservative Corbyn” was borderline suicidal. Corbyn may have been unpopular, but Keir had backed him as leader. But in between he did manage to land a few more telling blows on the economy.
“Stop talking the country down,” the Convict shouted, waving his arms in irritation. It’s now unpatriotic to say anything negative about the country even if it’s true. Mention England’s 4-0 defeat to Hungary and you’re as good as dead.
Johnson didn’t want to talk about boring things that everyone cared about. Like the cost of living. He wanted only to talk about the things that divide the country. And excite the right wing of his party. Like Brexit. “We got Brexit done,” he insisted. News to everyone. If Brexit is done, why have we yet to see any benefits? Why are we about to break international law and enter a trade war with the EU?
Like refugees. Labour was on the side of the people smugglers. Apparently. The Tories were on the side of the wannabe refugees who stayed in their own country and died. Oh, and also on the side of ignoring the law again by leaving the human rights court. There was no piece of international law the UK should be willing to accept. The World Trade Organization? Full of lefty capitalists. UEFA? Nasty footballcrats who are plotting a new offside law to disadvantage England and Wales.
And another thing … the Convict was rattling through his list of perceived grievances. Labour was doing nothing to stop next week’s rail strikes. He seemed to think Labour had been in government for the past 12 years and that Starmer was responsible for the Tories having made no effort to negotiate with the unions.
The hardcore, insentient fanatics on the backbenches lapped it up. Never happier than when they have an enemy to fight. The EU. The human rights court. The unions. Refugees. The world. They roared their approval. So much so that much of the rest of PMQs was an unintelligible cacophony. A pitiful shambles for which the weak Speaker was responsible. Lindsay Hoyle makes a show of threatening MPs but never follows through. And the MPs walk all over him. Throw one out and you may get a functioning chamber.
Once the last echoes of PMQs had died away, Priti Patel stood up to give a statement on why spending £500,000 on a flight that had never taken off was fantastic value for money. It had never been about the numbers, more about the fight. “We have a world-leading scheme,” she said, repeating the words her idiot non-savant junior minister, Tom Pursglove, had used on Monday. World-leading, as in everyone else has decided it’s a catastrophically moronic idea.
But even though the lawyers – Priti Vacant couldn’t conceal her contempt for people who try to apply the law correctly – had managed to get everyone off the plane, the scheme was still a stunning success. The fewer refugees we exported to Rwanda, the more its value was proved. Out-trafficking the traffickers. And yes there was another plane ready to leave, just as soon as the lawyers had made sure there would be no one on it. It’s what the refugees would have wanted. Their aim had always been to get to Rwanda. You just couldn’t get there by rubber boat.
Yvette Cooper reprised her role from Monday. Her outrage at the way the government is shaming the country is palpable. She was the model of clarity as she took apart Vacant’s threadbare arguments. There was a reason Israel had given up on its people transportation scheme. And it wasn’t because it was unethical. Though it was. It was because it didn’t work. So how about setting up some safe routes and co-operating more with France. Priti winced at the thought of doing anything with France. Wait til someone tells her it’s just across the Channel.
“We must adopt the right tone,” said Vacant. Her lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. She’s not even a clever narcissist. “And a scheme cannot be unworkable and expensive.” Except it can, obviously. Truly, she is a philosopher queen. If it’s possible to get something wrong, she will find a way. Resourceful, if nothing else.
Much of the rest of the session was spent with Tory backbenchers trying to persuade themselves that the beastlier they were being to refugees the nicer they were being. Dialectical refugeeism. Schrödinger’s foreigners. Peter Bone said there was a difference between traffickers and smugglers. And that anyone who allowed themselves to be smuggled deserved to die.
Others just laid into foreign courts. They have yet to learn the difference between foreign and international. Or that the UK was one of the principal founders of the European convention on human rights. Jonathan Gullis seemed unaware that the human rights court was written into the Good Friday agreement. And he is parliamentary private secretary to Brandon Lewis. The Northern Ireland secretary. Truly the wankocracy is in overdrive. Heading remorselessly towards the wall.
