Be thankful for small mercies. At Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions we were spared the spectacle of Keir Starmer andKemi Badenochcompeting over who could sound tougher on foreigners. That would have been a squalid death match.
But both leaders appeared to have sated their blood lust for the time being. Keir lost in a half-world where his policies were a lot less unpleasant than his language: Kemi just lost. All she knows is that her rock bottom is a lot lower than the government. Not that anyone’s planning to give her the chance.
Maybe it’s the weather. A sense of it being too nice to be bothered. Or maybe it’s battle fatigue. It’s just too hard to keep on caring when every day is a new shitshow. Or maybe it’s that Keir has finally given up on Kemi. Has stopped treating her and the Tories as serious opposition.
He’s done his best to engage with Kemi over the past six months but has now come to the same conclusion as many of the Tory leader’s own MPs: that enough is enough and she won’t be around on the shadow frontbench for much longer. That she’s achieved the status of little more than irritation. And who could blame Starmer? KemiKaze isn’t stupid. She too can read the room. She also knows that she is the real experiment that has failed.
It’s also been a rough few days for both leaders. For Keir, because he’s been getting it in the neck from all sides. From the left for channelling his inner Nige and from the right for being inauthentic. A fake Farage pub bore. His hatred for immigrants does not run nearly deep enough. For Kemi because … Just because. Every day is a bad day for her. She hasn’t had a good one so far this year. The only thing keeping her going is her denial. That and a misplaced sense of pride.
There were few cheers from the backbenches for either leader as they took their seats just before midday. The chronicle of several deaths foretold. Both Keir and Kemi are running low on political capital with their own MPs.
Labour are longing for Starmer to give them a direction. A feelgood mission. Too often he just looks as if his only purpose is to achieve power and he has no idea of what he wants to do with it. The Tories have reached the point where they only dare share their deepest fears with their therapists. Given the choice, most would quite like to book themselves into the Priory for a couple of months, only their shrinks worry about the effect they might have on the other patients.
You can tell Kemi has had enough. It’s in her smile. The resigned expression of the condemned. All the dice have been rolled and she’s now completely out of chances. She’s done her best and still been found wanting. She was the wrong person at the wrong time. Any leader would have failed with the current Tory party. She has just failed spectacularly. Her one saving grace is that, increasingly, no one is paying her much attention. All eyes are on Reform. That’s where the real opposition lies.
Preparation has never been Kemi’s strong point. She prefers to lead by vibes. Not many people’s preferred modus operandi, but KemiKaze will be KemiKaze. It didn’t end well. Even on a low-key day when PMQs felt more meta than usual – politics for performance’s sake – she crashed and burned.
This time it felt terminal. Because not even her own MPs could bring themselves to care that much. They – along with Starmer – are looking ever further right.
It wasn’t even that Kemi’s line of questioning was misguided. The cost of living crisis is a legitimate line of concern. More that her research had all been done on X. So was almost entirely wrong.
She began by insisting unemployment had gone up by 10%. No one knew where she had got this figure from. Least of all her. Though it was entirely false. Keir replied with his own dreamland. The country had never had it so good. Everything was just tickety-boo. He seemed to have forgotten that on Monday he had been talking of acountry broken and ruined by immigrants.
This only inspired KemiKaze to greater insanity. Actually, now she came to think about it, the country had been an economic and cultural nirvana when the Tories had been in power. One day she may work out just why the voters thought otherwise.
Moving on, she went on to trash the trade deals with India and the US and the one that is being done with the EU. Starmer had to point out that he had saved the jobs of workers in Solihull, Scunthorpe and Scotland.
In the end, Keir appeared to just lose it. It wasn’t worth taking time out of his Wednesday schedule to answer six pointless questions from a time-limited leader of a time-limited party. The Tories, he said, were heading for oblivion. A dead party walking. A deeply unserious party. There aren’t many who would disagree.
Not least Nigel Farage, who used his question to compliment Starmer for coming round to his way of thinking on immigration. He had enjoyed Monday’s speech. But could he just conflate the illegal immigration figures with the legal to further muddy the waters? For Nige, everyone in a small boat is a potential terrorist. Keir didn’t exactly thank Farage for his contribution. Though he has learned to treat him with courtesy. The real leader of the opposition.
Courtesy was in short supply when Liz Saville Roberts, the group leader of Plaid Cymru, took the prime minister to task for his language on immigration and enquired if there was any belief Starmer held on to for more than a week. “Yes,” said Keir. “My belief that everything you say is rubbish.” It was a funny putdown. But one that came with edge. Unnecessarily rude. There was no need for that.
Liz shrugged it off with better grace than Starmer deserved. She knew she had got under his skin. Had highlighted an inconvenient truth. That the prime minister’s beliefs were only skin deep. That, after nearly a year in power, we were still waiting to find out what Labour did believe in.