The most important thing in politics, according to Lyndon Johnson, is knowing how to count. He was talking about votes, but the rule also applies, as we shall see, to questions. And friends.
It was Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions. Keir Starmer had gone to Brazil to talk about reducing carbon emissions, and Kemi Badenoch, taking the idea of opposition rather literally, had gone to Aberdeen to demand we extract more oil. Perhaps it’s her time hanging around those parts that explains her motto: when you’re in a hole, keep drilling.
So instead we had David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and Starmer’s new number two, taking questions from the Conservatives’ James Cartlidge. Sorry, what’s that? You’re not sure you’ve heard of James Cartlidge? Come on, try a bit harder: MP for South Suffolk since 2015! Shadow Defence Secretary since July 2024. That James Cartlidge!
Still nothing? Don’t worry. After his moment in the spotlight on Wednesday, you’re unlikely to hear from him again. If Badenoch had deliberately set out to demonstrate that this stuff is harder than it looks, she couldn’t have made a better choice.
And yet if you had asked, one minute in, which of these men was having a waking nightmare of a day, we would have said Lammy. Thrilled at being the first black man to answer at PMQs, he had put on a new suit that morning, and had, in his excitement, quite forgotten to pin on a poppy.
Now, your mileage on this stuff may vary. Perhaps you feel that we’re only five days into November, and that failing to pin a piece of paper to your lapel isn’t in itself proof that you wish the Nazis had won the Second World War. But take it from me that, for figures in public life, the thought of appearing on TV without a poppy in the first week of November is the sort of thing that has them waking up in cold sweats.
It was a baffling miss. There’s often a junior whip behind the Speaker’s chair for these sessions, handing out some lapel item or other that members might want, to show solidarity with farmers or orphans or the Welsh. Why was there no one there for this, the only lapel item that is absolutely essential in these days of policed patriotism?
On the opposition benches, MPs instantly spotted what was missing. You could see them unconsciously checking their own lapels. Behind Lammy, an MP’s phone pinged, urging action. And came the hour, came the man. Two rows behind Lammy was backbencher Calvin Bailey. Four years ago he was a Wing Commander in Kabul overseeing the British evacuation. Now he launched himself into a rescue operation every bit as vital to our national standing. He removed his own poppy and leaned forward. Greater love hath no man than this, that he pass down his pin for his frontbencher.
Like village scorers, his colleagues cast about for some way to fix their error, but you can’t just cook the scorebook in Parliament
It quickly reached Bridget Phillipson, sat next to Lammy, who concealed it in her left hand and tried to pass it to the Justice Secretary, but for some reason he didn’t take it. Maybe he was too focused on answering questions. Maybe he hates our brave boys in uniform. Let’s see which option the Mail goes for.
Behind him someone leaned forward to warn him, but he ignored her. Or whispered back that this was nothing, and she should see what he was planning to do to the Cenotaph afterwards. Finally, fifteen minutes in, Phillipson simply reached across and slapped Lammy on the chest, and there, suddenly, his lapel was sporting his symbol of Loving Britain.
And yet somehow Lammy wasn’t the person in the chamber having the worst day. Cartlidge had six questions — remember that number. He’d used the second to ask something very specific: could Lammy assure the house that, since last month’s accidental release from prison of a sex offender, “no other asylum-seeking offender has been accidentally let out of prison?”
When people ask things like that, it’s because they know the answer. Lammy certainly did: he’d been told the night before that there’d been another incident. So the Justice Secretary swerved: Labour had inherited prisons that were a mess. Cartlidge asked again. And again. And again. Up in the gallery, we were waiting for the moment when he would spring his trap, and reveal the answer. And then he asked the same question again. Lammy gave a final answer, listing how bad things had got under the Tories, and how Labour was fixing it all. “Do better!” he told Cartlidge.
It was good advice. Cartlidge rose for what he thought was his final question, the one that would contain the great reveal, only to find that Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had gone elsewhere. Cartlidge complained, and Hoyle was about to call him, before a clerk interrupted: the Conservative had had his allotment, and now it was someone else’s turn.
On the Tory front bench, there was a scene familiar to anyone who has scored a village cricket match: have we done six already? On either side of Cartlidge, Neil O’Brien and Alex Burghart whispered to each other anxiously. Hadn’t the third one been a wide? Between them, the shadow defence secretary looked like a man in a waking anxiety dream: you have one job, and you forget to do it, live on national television. He stared at the Labour benches in a distant way, presumably wishing that he could, by sheer will, go back in time just two minutes.
Like village scorers, his colleagues cast about for some way to fix their error, but you can’t just cook the scorebook in Parliament. O’Brien went to argue — or plead — with Hoyle, but to no avail. They grabbed an order paper to see who else was down to ask a question: could someone be persuaded to give theirs up and ask the question Cartlidge had failed to deliver? Rishi Sunak was bobbing up and down to get a question. Would he do one final service to his party? No, it turned out. Nor would anyone else give up their precious question in order to rescue their colleague. Poor Cartlidge.
There was nothing for it. As the session ended, he rose to make a point of order. “The Telegraph is reporting that a police manhunt has been launched for a second asylum seeker who was mistakenly freed from prison,” he said. “Can you advise me on how I can ask the Justice Secretary whether he was aware of that?” There was an obvious, and tragic, answer: learn to count.
