To the Commons for an inert yet scratchy prime ministerial statement on the Iran war. Sir Keir Starmer managed to be both listless and peevish. We learned little that was new. The nasal knight was crosser with Israel than with Iran. He railed against Kemi Badenoch, too. The Tory leader laughed that she fully expected Labour to blame her for the war. ‘Yes!’ cried government MPs. They actually did mean it.
Sir Keir was ‘fed up’ with wars. This was put in the sullen tone of a hotel housekeeper irked by guests leaving damp towels on the bedroom floor. And he had been on the blower to France’s President Macron. They had agreed to hold ‘a leaders-level summit later this year’. The Westminster press pack will be hoping for a plush venue. Saint Tropez would be popular, Torquay less so.
So far as stopping the war went, that was it. For all Sir Keir’s constipated disapproval, he plainly knows he can not change a thing. As he keeps on boasting, he has ‘kept us out of the war’. Yet he also tries to present himself as a leader of martial despatch, deploying our Armed Forces to ‘keep us safe’.
Parliament can see through such double bluster. The chamber was far from full.
Government whips had pretty obviously told Labour MPs to praise Sir Keir for his ‘leadership’. You can always find backbenchers to oblige.
Peter Swallow (Lab, Bracknell), whose surname says it all, waited more than 100 minutes to say just this. He looked slightly uncomfortable as he was regurgitating it. Mohammad Yasin (Lab, Bedford) ‘commended the Prime Minister for his efforts’. Gorblimeyish public schoolboy Jim Dickson (Lab, Dartford) and Alison Hume (Lab, Scarborough) both uttered something similar. Debbie Abrahams (Lab, Oldham E & Saddleworth) closed her lazy eye and marvelled at ‘all the Prime Minister is doing to de-escalate the conflict’.
Purple hair-dyed Afzal Khan (Lab, Manchester Rusholme) thanked Sir Keir for his ‘statesmanship’. The rest of Mr Khan’s question was something about Pakistan but the details were elusive. He does not always put his teeth in properly.
Sir Keir absorbed this flattery without much interest. He is not good at returning compliments. Too selfish or maybe just tone deaf to the pretty traditions of politics. He actually believes it when they tell him he’s a champion.
A prime minister who was having a real impact on the global crisis would have been heard differently. The House would have buzzed. This House was limp. No one truly believes Downing Street has much to say. Some PMs are thrusters. Sir Keir is a shrivelling swerver.
He kept describing this or that as ‘really important’. He claimed his much-delayed defence investment plan would be ‘really robust’. No one paid much attention. Words plop out of him like rabbit droppings. He speaks English so badly, choosing such dead metaphors and rigid cliches, that there is no frisson in his orbit. He talks too much. Most of them do. This statement and the following questions could have been completed in half the time, to more powerful effect.
‘We’re bearing down on the cost of living,’ he quacked lifelessly by way of answer to Tom Tugendhat (Con, Tonbridge), who had raised the prospect of oil shortages. Sir Jeremy Hunt (Con, Godalming & Ash) suggested that a crisis allowed a PM to do something radical – such as cutting welfare spending. Sir Keir showed no interest in that.
Mrs Badenoch and other Tories implored him to drill oil in the North Sea. Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley & Holderness) became so exasperated about Labour’s Net Zero obstinacy that he called Ed Miliband ‘insane’. This was against Commons rules and was naturally withdrawn at once. But many people think it, not all of them on the Right.
Mr Miliband himself, a rare visitor, was initially in attendance. Perhaps he is starting to worry that his refusal to drill for fossil fuels is becoming inconvenient to this insipid Prime Minister.
