What a voice. The last PMQs of 2025 belonged not to Sir Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenoch, nor even to the Scots Nats’ Stephen Flynn who made the prime minister cross.
The laurels were seized by a Labour backbencher, Antonia Bance, who represents the (quite possibly deaf) people of Tipton and Wednesbury. She was louder than a Concorde.
Hansard will record that at 25 minutes past noon, following a question from some Cornish Lib Dem dribbler, the Speaker invited indomitable Bance to take the floor.
She was sitting beyond the gangway by a Bolton boy, Phil Brickell. He, at least 15 years old, wore his best Christmas jumper and an expression of innocent composure.
On Miss Bance’s other side was Sean Woodcock (Lab, Banbury) who never stops fingering his beard; beyond him, Richard Quigley (Lab, Isle of Wight W), one of life’s dormice.
‘Antonia Bance,’ bellowed Speaker Hoyle. It was as if he had opened the gates of a blast furnace.
First she sprang to her feet. You don’t get many Bances to the ton, and as she shot upwards little Brickell and the bearded Woodcock did well not to take off, such was the readjustment of bench upholstery. From the furniture springs came a ‘twanggggg’. Dormouse Quigley twitched.
Miss Bance started talking noisily, adenoidally, about the West Midlands car industry.
Labour backbencher Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) was louder than a Concorde in the Commons, remarks QUENTIN LETTS
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch challenged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to ban doctors from going on strike in Wednesday’s PMQs
The volume was spectacular. I have a cartoon image of a bucket-shaped jaw opening and closing and of a tremendous din ensuing. Mr Brickell cleaved to his bench. Mr Woodcock sank from view.
The roaring Bance, swinging one arm like a regimental sergeant major, complained that Nigel Farage (Ref, Clacton) was ‘not here as usual’.
Mr Farage was in fact in an upstairs gallery, quite alone. Perhaps he had seen Miss Bance’s name on the order paper and had baulked at having his hairdo disintegrate under her gusting decibels.
Opposition MPs started shouting, ‘Behind you!’ and pointing upstairs at Mr Farage. Miss Bance, unconcerned, continued to bellow and turned up the volume even further.
An already vast voice turned into a Ferrari-engine growl and easily conquered the chorus of perhaps 50 hecklers.
By the time she sat down – with another boingggg – Messrs Brickell and Woodcock looked as if they had been through a tornado. The dormouse had lost its glasses.
But the government front bench, at last, was laughing.
Sir Keir had started, I grant you, with a decent, scripted joke. He offered Reform some Yuletide advice, namely to avoid mysterious visitors from the East bearing gifts.
This was a reference to Reform’s dodgy links with Russia. But that was the best of Sir Keir’s many Christmas lines. Others were dire.
As for Mrs Badenoch, she challenged Sir Keir to ban doctors from going on strike. Not that he would ever do such a thing because ‘he doesn’t have the baubles’.
A plodding Sir Keir accused the Conservative front bench of being ‘non-entities’, writes QUENTIN LETTS
A plodding, prosaic Sir Keir accused the Conservative front bench of being ‘non-entities’.
Mrs Badenoch merrily shot back: ‘He’s talking about non-entities? What about his cabinet? A bunch of turkeys. They could fit right in at a Bernard Matthews factory.’
The SNP’s Mr Flynn deployed that old gambit of saying he did not intend to mention various government failures – and then, of course, proceeded to list them.
He raised a laugh by wishing Sir Keir a happy Christmas and asking ‘how does he intend to spend his final one in Downing Street?’
The nasal knight blinked, pouted and said he intended to spend Christmas getting an update from Rachel Reeves on redevelopment plans for the Grangemouth refinery plant.
‘He’s plainly not interested in the £120 million of investment in Grangemouth,’ said a peeved Sir Keir.
A mere £120 million? That’s mere scraps compared to what Sir Keir is spending to rejoin the EU’s Erasmus scholarship programme for students. For the sums he is spending on that chi-chi scheme he need not have imposed the farm tax.
Rachel Reeves, unusually, missed PMQs. Maybe that mad splurge on Erasmus had reduced her to tears again.
