Prepare to be battered by boredom as Starmer puts Tory black hole on never-ending replay
This could go on for months. Years possibly. The ultimate get-out clause. The answer to every question. Tricky or otherwise. Why are things so crap at the moment? Because the last government ruined the public finances. Why did it take me so long to get to work today? A £22bn black hole. Everything is explained by Tory cover-ups and incompetence. And by and large, rightly so. The headline takeaway of the last election was that everyone was sick to the back teeth of the Conservatives.
None of which makes for a particularly interesting prime minister’s questions these days. Back in the Tory dog days there was some edge. Some jeopardy. How was Rishi Sunak going to dodge his way out of the latest shitshow? Now, not so much.
All of which suits Keir Starmer just fine. He knows he’s not a box office performer at the dispatch box. He doesn’t have that sort of charisma. He’s never going to have his MPs falling about in the aisles with his killer punchlines. So he doesn’t bother trying. Just a quick look through the files to remind him of who will be asking the questions and then deliver the stock answer – £22bn.
Boredom is Starmer’s secret weapon. One that he’s determined to use for as long as possible. And he can get away with it because it is laced with sincerity. Almost everyone believes he is telling the truth when he says the Tories have wrecked the country. We’d like him to be a bit more cheerful. To offer us a flicker of hope. But I guess you can’t have everything.
No wonder, then, that Rishi Sunak has all but given up. Nowadays he feels so diminished that he appears to occupy negative space. No one is even aware he is in the room.
Rish! isn’t the only one running on fumes. Jeremy Hunt looks to have aged a decade in the last few months. It would be nice to think that the weight of his failings had finally caught up with him. But that is to credit him with too much self-awareness.
Of the four remaining Tory leadership contenders only James Cleverly bothered to make an appearance. And he looked as if he would rather have been somewhere else.
For his opening three questions, Sunak chose to mention the cuts in winter fuel allowance. Late in the day, Rish! has become a paid up Corbynista, suddenly desperate to get his hands on the Holy Grail of Jezza’s impact assessment that found 4,000 pensioners might die. Keir did what Keir does – £22bn. The black hole trumps everything these days. It wasn’t long before Sunak got bored with caring about pensioners. They weren’t his problem any more. And hell, old people have got to die of something. So instead he rattled on about farming, which he also doesn’t give a toss about. Keir again yelled £22bn and everyone nodded off back to sleep. It was as dull as it was pointless.
There’s no way back from this for the Tories at the moment. Their world has become utterly binary. Either they maintain that they left the economy in fine shape and insist Labour are just catastrophising. In which case they have to explain why everyone else has got the opposite impression. Or they have to fess up and take their punishment beating. Not surprisingly, they tend to prefer the delusional cul-de-sac.
Rishi Sunak has all but given up. He feels so diminished he appears to occupy negative space. No one is even aware he is in the room