Sir Keir Starmer wanted to sound resolute. Man of iron, that sort of thing. ‘I know,’ said some bright spark in No 10. ‘Why don’t we use the verb “yield”?’ Everyone agreed that this was a capital idea. Yield: Churchillian, innit? And you have to jut your jaw a bit when you say it.
And so, in his opening PMQs answer to Kemi Badenoch, Sir Keir produced his word. On the matter of Greenland and Donald Trump he said: ‘I will not yield. Britain will not yield on our principles and values.’
Oooh, I thought. Yield. That’s good. And to have it twice, with that elision of himself and Britain. Well done, Sir Keir. Might the old sausage finally be showing some character?
The trouble with tin-eared dullards is that when someone gives them a stirring phrase, they can’t resist repeating it. The nasal knight ended up saying ‘yield’ six times.
Mrs Badenoch supported him on Greenland but wondered why Chagossians could not also choose their own destiny. Instead we have just, er, yielded their islands to Mauritius, at a cost of several billion pounds. Sir Keir was greatly displeased by Mrs B’s question and claimed she was trying to do Trump’s dirty work. ‘He wants me to yield on my position and I’m not going to do so,’ cried Sir Keir. Mrs Badenoch was a ‘naked opportunist’.
The nasal knight ended up saying ‘yield’ six times, writes Quentin Letts
Kemi Badenoch said she’d been banging on about the ‘terrible’ Chagos deal for 12 months.
Kemi snorted that this was baloney. She’d been banging on about the ‘terrible’ Chagos deal for 12 months. Sir Keir again reached for the Y-word. He complained that Trump was trying to get him to ‘yield on my principle’.
Sir Ed Davey was soon chewing Sir Keir for being soft on Trump. Sir Keir, eager to make sure the broadcasters used a clip of his magic word, retorted: ‘I said I will not yield.’ He attacked Sir Ed’s weakness for, er, soundbites.
Steve Witherden, a slightly peculiar Labour man from Montgomeryshire, rocked on the heels of his cowboy boots, demanding retaliatory tariffs on the US. Sir Keir: ‘I’ve set out my principles. I’m not going to yield on those principles.’
All right, all right! We got it. He had a new word!
The session was a noisy one. The visiting Speaker of the Norwegian parliament watched with a certain measure of astonishment, not least when the Conservatives’ Richard Holden (Basildon & Billericay) was given the red card. Mr Holden is often noisy and Speaker Hoyle was for once in no mood to take any more of it. Mr Holden collected his mobile telephone and lanyard and sauntered off to an early lunch.
Robert Jenrick (Newark), distant and pocket-sized, was in his new seat on the Reform benches. Sir Keir had been given a sheaf of gags to use about the former shadow justice secretary’s defection from the Tories. One of them was spoilt by an intervention from the Speaker. Another came when the Conservatives were doing a lot of heckling. Sir Keir reached for his crib sheet and said ‘they shout on a Wednesday and they defect on a Thursday’. Again, this was a decent line. But as with the ‘yield’ stuff, it felt less than entirely authentic. It was too obviously a spin doctor’s gag rather than an extempore barb.
What a plodder he is. His corner men must despair. This was one of his better PMQs outings for months yet it should, given her party’s splits, have gone a lot worse for Mrs Badenoch. At one point she accused the Cabinet of plotting against Sir Keir. Ministers fell silent and the Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden, started urgently scratching his neck. Guilty as charged, m’lud!
Near the end, Mr Jenrick was given a question. He rose to a barrage of Labour booing but soon silenced that by mentioning a prison officer who died. This is an old parliamentary gambit. To avoid acidic mockery in the House you reach for a topic so sad that everyone has to shut up. Effective, but a little cowardly.
