The Prime Minister is in office. But what is he running?
“I think they’ve lost the sympathy of the public, and they’ve lost the sympathy of their colleagues.” Keir Starmer was talking about doctors, but it was a pretty good summary of the situation faced by his government. Watching him take questions for 90 minutes, the thought again occurred that Starmer is an incongruous figure to excite the levels of hatred that he clearly does. He is the greyest holder of the office since John Major, and with all respect to Mrs Starmer, it seems amazing that the prime minister is capable of arousing any kind of passion in anyone.
We’ll return to Starmer. The day began with an appearance from Danny Kruger, who defected to Reform in September, taking questions on the party’s newest celebrity signing, the porn star Bonnie Blue. Ms Blue last week told a far-right website that she supports the party’s tax and immigration policies, which was a surprise to people more familiar with her usual approach of “let them all in”.
Kruger is an evangelical Christian who believes that sex is God’s sacred gift for marriage. Blue has been kicked off OnlyFans over her belief that sex is a terrific money-making venture between a woman and 1,057 men in 12 hours. The MP’s eyebrows twitched when Blue was mentioned, but he’d decided hers was a welcome intervention. “We’re not going to be fussy about that,” Kruger replied. Fussiness about supporters certainly isn’t something that has characterised the party so far. It says something that the country’s most notorious porn star is somehow one of the more savoury names associated with the party.
Kruger explained: “I’m not going to be judgmental about people who want to vote Reform.” Don’t worry, Danny, the rest of us have got that covered. In this permissive age, there are fewer and fewer acceptable reasons to be judgmental about anyone, but voting Reform is going to remain one for a while yet, certainly if I have anything to do with it.
And what of the brilliant ways that Reform can save money without hurting services, that are easily implemented and yet have somehow escaped anyone actually in power? It turned out to be the usual plans to fire “back office” staff. There will be especially deep cuts in human resources, with two thirds of the headcount to go. It’s hardly a surprise that Reform don’t see the point of HR, though if Farage were slightly better at it, he might not have lost half the MPs he started the parliament with. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how that one works out. Good rules for life are “never get divorced from a lawyer” and “never try to fire your HR department”.
And so back to Starmer. The prime minister had allocated Parliament’s Liaison Committee a scant 90 minutes: he was due in Berlin to discuss Ukraine. With the world on fire, how would the MPs use that precious time? Alberto Costa, the Tory MP who chairs the Standards Committee, opened the bowling with a question about, I kid you not, a tweet that the prime minister had sent on bus fares. His complaint was that Starmer had said Labour was freezing fares, when IN FACT the Conservatives had also frozen fares.
Other members of Liaison Committee were carefully stony-faced at this line of questioning. Costa quoted the ministerial code — “the ministerial code at one point six brackets B”, “para nine point one”, “para nine point three” — at length, demanding answers about why ministers briefed journalists when they could be talking to MPs. It was one of those questions that really contained its own answer.
Perhaps Costa sees himself as a latter-day Eliot Ness, busting Al Capone over his taxes. An alternative view is that he has disappeared so far up the ministerial code that he’s lost sight of what matters. Imagine, while Jews are murdered on an Australian beach, while the US abandons its allies to crawl to any passing dictator, while social media amplifies Neo-Nazis and racists march through London and a leading national newspaper grants a respectful interview to a man who believes people with brown skin shouldn’t be MPs, giving a single damn about whether a tweet from the prime minister gave a complete account of the history of British transport regulation.
The Committee spent 24 minutes on Costa’s questions, which barely troubled Starmer. He even joked about the speculation over his leadership. His one moment of real discomfort came later, at the hands of Cat Smith, a Labour MP, and Alistair Carmichael, a Lib Dem. They were asking about farmers, who are caught in a particular trap: until last October, if you wanted your children to take on your farm, the best advice was to hang onto it until you died. Now the best advice is to have handed over the farm seven years ago. Wheat prices being what they are, no one can afford the time machine necessary to follow this advice. There is, however, a third option, which is to die before April.
So long as someone has raised it, the process has been followed
Smith asked whether he was aware that “some farmers who have terminal diagnoses are actively planning to expedite their own deaths”. This is of course an option that Starmer wants to make available to all of us, though probably without using a shotgun.
“I’ve had discussions with a number of individuals who’ve drawn the matter to my attention,” Starmer replied, in flawless bureaucratese. Carmichael took up the cudgel. “Do we agree that nobody should feel they would be better off dying?” he asked. The prime minister flannelled.
Carmichael, his rage growing, pressed again. “I can assure you,” Starmer replied, “that the president of the NFU has raised this issue with me on more than one occasion.” Well, that’s alright then. So long as someone has raised it, the process has been followed. Is anyone supposed to do anything after an issue has been raised with the prime minister? Presumably, if there were, someone would have told him.
The tax trap, Starmer sighed, was a “necessary consequence” of changing the law. It was a strange response, a shrug of helplessness. He would neither defend the position nor change it. It was what it was. Somehow it had happened, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Perhaps this is why he infuriates people so much: he is the embodiment of a state that is stuck, unable to change anything. Has anyone told him that he’s in charge?
