The most interesting thing at PMQs was to be found two rows behind Sir Keir Starmer. There, snug beside one another, smouldered Angela Rayner and Lucy Powell. Two lemon-chewing tricoteuses. The Sisters Grudge.
This placement was no accident. They were making a statement. Until recently, both were in the Cabinet. Now both are out, their intentions only sharpened.
While Kemi Badenoch was doing her stuff, Misses Rayner and Powell smirked and allowed their eyebrows to flex by a 16th of an inch. Then the Prime Minister rose to his trotters. He craked away, cliches plopping like roundels of pink forcemeat from a pork production line.
Two rows back, those eyebrow muscles froze. Angela and Lucy sucked their lips into moues. Sir Keir’s prosaic replies won hurrahs from the Labour benches, but Rayner and Powell’s larynxes played no part in this. They wished to assert their presence, but no more than that for the time being.
The man they once served had entered to cheers from the Opposition as well as from the Government side. Sir Keir and his Chancellor have become vote winners for their opponents. The PM opened with a sneaky gambit, working a dig at Reform into an improperly long preamble. Sir Keir sat down sniggering. Speaker Hoyle itched.
‘Misses Rayner and Powell smirked and allowed their eyebrows to flex by a 16th of an inch,’ writes Quentin Letts
Mrs Badenoch probed Sir Keir’s plans for the Budget. In reply, he would no longer defend his manifesto promise not to raise taxes. Mrs Badenoch: ‘Well, well, well.’ Increasingly, she seems to be enjoying life.
Sir Ed Davey, for the Lib Dems, announced he was the proud owner of a Fawlty Towers box set. Soirees chez Davey: many an amusing hour can be had listening to his priceless impersonations of Basil, Manuel and the lamented Sybil. Sir Edward’s rendition of the goose-stepping sketch must be a thing to cherish.
The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, was earlier interrogated by a joint committee of peers and MPs investigating the China ‘spies’ scandal. Lord Hermer was sub-clause and footnote made flesh. He rotated his small, white hands. ‘I can only comment as a matter of generality,’ he said, and, ‘I would caution against rushing to categorise this process.’
Responding to one query, he replied, ‘Can I answer that question in two parts?’ It is not impossible that when Lady Hermer asks if he would like sugar on his breakfast grapefruit, he summons the breath through his nostrils, draws himself to his full 5ft 3ins, or whatever it is, and begins his answer with, ‘In consideration of other charges…’
All the officials involved in this balls-up had been splendid. ‘No one doubts their best efforts,’ said Lord Hermer with attempted suavity. Yes they do!
The old and new – as former deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner sat next to new deputy leader Lucy Powell at PMQs
Soon he became vexed about suggestions that Sir Keir or National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell got up to some funny business to appease China. ‘Disgraceful allegations!’ squeaked Lord Hermer. He overdid the indignation by perhaps 12 per cent. Sir Gavin Williamson (Con, Stone) decided to cut through the blubber and started shouting at him. Lord Hermer blinked. Dame Emily Thornberry (Lab, Islington S) shouted right back at Sir Gavin. The chairman shouted for order. Lord Hermer looked as if he might need to gobble a few quaaludes to recover his nerve.
This spy scandal is not his first prang. How odd that so punctilious a fellow keeps landing in the soup. Does the precision of Law blind him to the bleedin’ obvious? He waltzed around the concept of enmity, allegedly essential to the prosecuting of espionage. A country must be formally tagged ‘an enemy’ until we could nab spies.
Does he not realise – as a jury would have done – that so-called partners can be secretly inimical? Might any country spying on us not be proving itself an enemy? Lord Hermer looks only at the letter of statute. He appears not to understand the treacherous possibilities of subterfuge. This may explain why he is so hopeless at politics.
