You could argue that prime minister’s questions is no longer fit for purpose. Indeed, that it never really has been. Just a theatre showcase for some performance politics where few answers are ever extracted from the prime minister.
To which you might now add that the Tories are not the real opposition. So Kemi Badenoch is essentially an impostor. Sometime over the summer the mantle of official opposition passed to Reform UK. So it really should be Nigel Farage, not Kemi, asking the questions.
No one is particularly interested in anything the Tories and Badenoch have to say. Certainly not Labour. All their attention is focused on fighting Farage now that Reform are 15 points ahead in the polls.
Even Reform think Reform are the official opposition. They don’t give the Conservatives a second thought. Nor does the rest of the country. No one is listening to Kemi. Not least because the main broadcasters no longer bother to screen her speeches. Her big number to the Scottish oil industry on Tuesday might as well not have happened because no one heard it.
Even the more sensible Tories recognise they have become an irrelevance. Praying they somehow avoid total annihilation but knowing that as long as Kemi is their leader, they may as well not exist. Because she’s just not that good. A fatal combination of misplaced confidence and inflexibility. Put simply, she doesn’t listen to anyone.
Wednesday’s PMQs should have been a gimme for Kemi. As close to an open goal as you can get. Just half an hour before the start, the Guardian had broken the story that Angela Rayner had admitted she had underpaid the stamp duty owed on her Hove flat by up to £40,000.
Now was the time for Kemi to rip up her prepared questions and go all out to embarrass Labour. Rayner herself looked as if she was prepared for a ritual humiliation. Not to mention the possibility of losing her job. She entered the Commons looking like death warmed up, flanked by a minder. A picture of misery. She could barely bring herself to raise her eyes. Keir Starmer gave her a friendly tap on the shoulder. Not a flicker. No hint of acknowledgment. A private hell.
Initially it seemed as though Badenoch had understood what was expected of her. Why was Rayner still in office, she asked. That would have done nicely for openers. Except she then got bored and retreated to her prepared script on government borrowing.
Starmer couldn’t believe his luck. Neither could Rayner. Keir gave a brief defence of Angela. She had referred herself to the advisers on ministerial interests – more than many Tories had when they were found to have been in breach of the ministerial code – and we could all wait till he reported back. In the meantime, Angela was going nowhere.
There were so many more questions Kemi could have asked. Like: what did Starmer know about Rayner’s tax arrangements and when did he know it? Did he think Rayner had acted within the spirit of the law? Was it her lawyer or her who had filed the wrong information?
But Dr Kemi didn’t. What Keir didn’t know was that at the age of 14 she had been awarded the Nobel prize for economics. To go with her medical scholarship to Stanford. And God knows what from Harvard. Call her Dr Dr Kemi.
She didn’t seem to understand the laughter – some from her own benches – when Keir got sidetracked by her long and distinguished record of academic achievements. The most decorated woman alive. So we disappeared down the byways of who was to blame for the economic mess we were in, and the moment of danger for Labour had passed.
Kemi’s final question was to wonder why the budget was taking place on 26 November. Really? Was that really the key question of the day?
The rest of the session just slipped by in a haze of inconsequentiality. Much as it had started. The Tory John Hayes ended the misery by launching into a paean to the British flag. Cue an outpouring of devotion.
It can’t be long before any politician caught not wearing a union jack suit will be publicly shamed for not being patriotic. Don’t you love your country, for fuck’s sake? The smart money is on Chris Philp to be the first person to paint the front of his own house white with a red cross. It’s certainly the sort of idiotic thing he would do.
Needless to say, we never got to hear what the real leader of the opposition had to say about Rayner. Or anything, for that matter. Because Nige, GB News badge on his lapel, was 3,000 miles away in Washington paying homage to the court of King Donald by giving evidence to a congressional hearing on free speech.
Hard to escape the irony. The organisers of the Reform party conference this weekend have banned some journalists from attending. Clearly you can have too much of a good thing.
The hearing started with the Republican Jim Jordan grandstanding that the UK’s Online Safety Act was the biggest threat to US democracy since the cold war. It had tried to stop people telling Americans that the Covid vaccine didn’t work. There’s nothing like a US committee hearing to make you feel affectionate towards the British system.
Next up was the Democrat Jamie Raskin. He didn’t waste his words. Why wasn’t the hearing talking about the danger posed by Russia, China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia? Farage was nothing but a Putin apologist and Trump sycophant. It was America that was banning free speech by arresting students for anti-Trump speech and banning books.
Nige didn’t miss a beat. He was there to show his devotion and he was determined to deliver. The UK was a terrible place. The worst. He was ashamed of what his country had become. It was outrageous Lucy Connolly had been locked up for inciting people to burn asylum seekers. Hell, they were only foreigners. Where was the British sense of fair play?
“I’m definitely not suggesting that the US impose extra tariffs on the UK,” Farage said. Having allowed the Sun to make that inference the day before. It’s sometimes tough being Nige when you’re trying to impress The Donald and the tech bros. Because Farage would never talk down his own country. That would never do.
