“We don’t need the pantomime auditions, please,” Lindsay Hoyle told Conservative MPs. Somehow, through what must have been a supreme effort of self-control, none of them replied “Oh yes we do!”
We certainly had some of the panto elements: the Speaker would be a decent Widow Twankey, there was a guest star more famous for their TV work in the shape of Nigel Farage, and at the despatch boxes we had a couple of clowns who could both say, quite truthfully, that no one is behind them.
A great moment in any panto is the early scene where a supporting character tries to keep a lid on a disaster that spirals rapidly out of their control. We got ours at the Treasury Committee, where Rachel Reeves, taking the role of Wishy-Washy, had been left in charge of the laundry, only for it to spring leaks in every direction!
Meg Hillier, the committee chair, wanted to know how this had happened. Reeves did her best. “The Budget had too much speculation,” the Chancellor said. “There were too many leaks.” The Treasury has no problem with speculation and leaks in principle, but they need to happen in moderation, ideally according to the plan drawn up in advance by officials.
“I want to say on the record how frustrated I am and have been by these incidents and the volume of speculation and leaks,” Reeves went on. It was an exciting example of Hot Dog Labourism: like so many Conservatives before her, she was just trying to find the guys who had sparked all this speculation, for instance by making emergency speeches in the run-up to the Budget to announce that taxes would have to rise.
“A leak inquiry is underway, with my full support,” she went on. More than that, the National Cyber Security Centre was undertaking “a forensic examination” of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s security. On the one hand, you’d think the OBR wouldn’t need to be told not to rely on poorly-managed WordPress plugins for its online security, but on the other hand, it clearly does.
“There were leaks that were clearly not authorised,” Reeves went on. Does that imply the existence of a category of leak which is authorised? Perish the thought. A lot of people, me included, are rude about Reeves, but it’s a real gift to be able to deliver this stuff with a straight face.
The leak inquiry will be run by James Bowler, the department’s permanent secretary. He was sat next to Reeves throughout the session, largely silent. A leak inquiry that only identifies the bad leakers, and not the good ones, will be a delicate operation. But these are the things a man must do to earn a knighthood.
It was nearly half an hour before they got on to asking her about the actual contents of the Budget. Here the Chancellor got a little punchier, defending her decisions, rather than the full-spectrum disaster that had been the run-up to the statement. Not everyone, it turns out, hates the Budget. After she finished giving evidence, Reeves dashed over to the House of Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions. On the way in, she was accosted by a Labour MP who wanted her to sign the Red Book. It will be a raffle prize in a local Labour Party fundraiser. Second prize: a leak of next year’s OBR forecasts.
Reeves might have wished she’d stayed away. After a wobbly start, Kemi Badenoch delivered perhaps her best-ever PMQs performance. Rather than pursuing weird theories from the internet, she had hit upon the novel strategy of asking Starmer about the government’s failure to deliver on its various promises. Energy bills falling? Teacher numbers up? More police recruited? Each time the prime minister swerved, and Badenoch would intone “WRONG!” before telling him by how much a target had been missed. It could almost be a catchphrase.
Her own side loved it. “Aaaaaaaah!” they chanted after she revealed her numbers, full of the panto spirit. Were police numbers going up? No, they were going down. Chris Philp, in the role of Baron Fleshcreep, emphasised the point by jabbing his finger angrily towards his crotch. Or maybe he was complaining about the difficulty of getting a GP appointment. “Wrong again!” Badenoch declared. “Under Labour, everything is getting worse.” And given how bad things were under the Tories, that’s quite a claim.
Ed Davey continued to exploit his position as the one member of the panto cast who can see the big orange villain. Would the prime minister, he asked, like to criticise President Trump’s national security strategy, which sets out America’s new policy of leading the unfree world in its campaign against the wicked democracies of Europe? He would not, of course. It would, for goodness’ sake, take more than 24 hours for the prime minister’s spokesman to say that Starmer doesn’t agree with Trump that Sadiq Khan is a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor”. This is not a panto whose hero is going to find his courage soon.
