A comically incapable man is locked in a toxic relationship with a self-absorbed woman
“I suspect I’m not the only member of the House with a Fawlty Towers DVD box set,” Ed Davey told Prime Minister’s Questions. One is a show about a comically incapable man frustrated by the world around him and locked in a toxic relationship with a woman who’s utterly self-absorbed. The other starred John Cleese and the late Prunella Scales.
Keir Starmer is a low-wattage Basil Fawlty, more likely to be found gently sobbing in his office than goose-stepping through the lobby. Where Basil wishes he had a higher class of guest, Starmer seems repelled by the awful middle class people who vote Labour. Both men, though, are worn down. There are even reports the prime minister might be about to abandon his catchphrase of “Don’t mention the Brexit.”
Kemi Badenoch on the other hand is first class at rolling her eyes and explaining that she warned him ages ago not to use the dodgy Rachel Reeves to rebuild the economy on the cheap. What Starmer badly needs is a sensible Polly to keep him on the straight and narrow. There’s even a candidate: directly behind the prime minister, two rows back in the spot Theresa May used to occupy, sat the new Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell. She has thoughts on how to run the madhouse, but will Basil listen?
Starmer opened with a long introduction about various things the government has been up to this week. The idea was probably to inspire his own side, battered by last week’s by-election and the appalling polling picture. Unfortunately his rhetorical style isn’t going to summon anyone to the barricades. As he went on, he was drowned out by Conservative heckling.
There’s something marvellously teenaged about her insistence that she should get the credit for good things but not the bad things
Badenoch’s first question was an obvious trap: would the prime minister confirm that the government’s policy was still not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT? But sometimes an obvious trap is all you need, if there’s no way round it. The prime minister talked about how well the economy was doing, but conspicuously failed to engage with the question.
“Well, well, well,” said a delighted Badenoch, like Prunella Scales clutching evidence of Basil’s secret gambling. “What a fascinating answer.” She had, she pointed out, asked exactly the same question in July and received a one-word answer: “Yes.” What had changed?
We all know that answer to that, of course: the chancellor is preparing to whack up income tax, and the prime minister doesn’t want to discuss it yet. The Conservative leader had achieved more with her first question than she has done in most of her previous outings put together. For all that Starmer said he wasn’t going to get into tax discussions, he had essentially confirmed that Labour’s manifesto tax promises no longer stand. Sybil had humiliated Basil once again.
Indeed she’d been so successful that she didn’t know where to go next. “We have some ideas for him!” she said, and the Labour benches all laughed and waved their hands in mock horror. They largely support the idea of tax rises, so she was going to struggle to split Starmer from his MPs on this U-turn. Neither did her claim that the past 14 years had been ones of unalloyed economic joy impress them.
Starmer pointed out that the Conservative record on economic stability and tax cuts was mixed at best. Meanwhile he’d just signed a deal to sell a load of Typhoons. “I started that deal back in January 2024!” complained Badenoch. Labour MPs loved that. There’s something marvellously teenaged about her insistence that she should get the credit for good things that started under the last government, but not responsibility for any of the bad things. “With this prime minister, it is always someone else’s fault,” she said, words that could very much be turned back in her direction.
Later on in the afternoon, we heard from Nigel Farage, complaining that Britain is still under the foreign jackboot of Brussels. Not, obviously, that he’s against being under foreign jackboots. He just prefers the footwear of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. “We are not sovereign!” he bellowed. On the bench next to him sat only his three male colleagues. For some reason Sarah Pochin, the definitely-not-racist MP for Runcorn, was absent. Perhaps she’d tried to come in but been put off by her leader’s intense suntan.
The mind wandered back to Fawlty Towers. Farage, in his electric blue suit, would be a fine Lord Melbury, whose airs and graces fool everyone while in reality he’s preparing to take us all to the cleaners and then jump on a plane to Florida.
