Victoria Starmer gazed down on her husband from the gallery, her face carefully immobile. It would stay that way throughout Prime Minister’s Questions defying the hopes of those of us watching for a reaction. She had brought her father along to watch the show. If he was hoping for a fun day out, we’ll have to hope she also got him tickets for a West End show.
Keir Starmer gave them a little smile as he sat down, then stood to inform us that overnight the RAF had gone into action against Houthi rebels, alongside the US. Tight security means this was only known in advance to people at the top of the British government, and members of Pete Hegseth’s softball team WhatsApp.
After such seriousness, the prime minister moved to lighter subject, congratulating MPs who’d taken part in the weekend’s marathons, including Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, “who I’m reliably informed is still running.”
This brought the house down. Jenrick is campaigning to replace Kemi Badenoch with the sort of subtlety you associate with toddlers playing hide-and-seek. In days gone by such manoeuvres were conducted with, if not becoming modesty, then at least a certain degree of embarrassment. There was an expectation that deniability would be plausible. Not any more. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that after the session Jenrick was spotted leafleting the Members’ Tea Room.
The unexpected benefit of this shamelessness is that, as Jenrick isn’t bothering to pretend that he’s not scheming, Tory MPs don’t feel obliged to pretend that they haven’t noticed. They were as pleased with the prime minister’s joke as Labour MPs. Possibly more: behind Badenoch, Louie French clapped his hands with delight. It’s possible that the advantages of a Jenrick leadership aren’t quite as obvious to his colleagues as they are to him.
For reasons that doubtless made sense to her, Kemi asked about the grooming gangs scandal
Dan Tomlinson, the Labour MP for Chipping Barnett, asked a question about a Reform-Tory pact that was so obviously planted that Speaker Lindsay Hoyle didn’t let Starmer answer, moving us along to Badenoch.
With local elections on Thursday, she might have been expected to ask about the advantages of having a Conservative council: Labour had lines prepared on both fly-tipping and potholes, of which there turn out to be more in Derbyshire than anywhere else in the country (90,000, which is, according to the standard measure, 22 Albert Halls). Instead, for reasons that doubtless made sense to her, she asked about the grooming gangs scandal: why couldn’t we have a full public inquiry.
There’s a simple answer to this, which as a former Cabinet minister, she knows perfectly well: an inquiry would cost a fortune, take a decade, and end up recommending the same things the last inquiry into the subject did. Even the appealing possibility that it would reveal nasty things about largely Labour-run councils wasn’t enough to persuade the Conservatives that it would be a good idea to have one.
Starmer replied, as he always does, that he’d prosecuted grooming gangs a decade ago, whereas neither Badenoch nor her Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, had shown much interest in the subject when they were in government, or indeed until Elon Musk started tweeting about it.
We had gone over all this ground in January, and it wasn’t at all obvious why we were going over it again. “If I were standing where he is, we would have had a national inquiry months ago,” Badenoch said, and next to her Philp nodded so hard he risked whiplash. “She says that the Conservatives would have a national inquiry,” Starmer replied. “In 14 years, they did not do it. It is so hollow.”
Nigel Farage, nut brown from pounding the streets of Clacton in the tireless service of his constituents, went his version of a local elections question, asking about small boats. He hasn’t worked out how to hold the chamber yet: the end of his question was drowned out by Labour MPs. Richard Tice responded by flapping his arms and making chicken noises. It was exactly as dignified as it sounds.
Finally we heard from Mark “My Dad Fought In The War” Francois, whose dad fought in the war. “Those who fought in world war two, including my own father, would often attest that no one did more to maintain their morale in adversity than Dame Vera Lynn,” he began. There turns out to be a campaign to build a statue of the forces’ sweetheart in Dover. Francois, the son of a WW2 veteran, wanted Starmer’s support for the project. “Will he accept a personal briefing on the campaign”, he said, preparing to launch a joke down the slipway, “in which case I suspect that he and I will meet again?”
The prime minister was supportive, so at least one Tory got what they wanted from the session. Badenoch should have tried suggesting that Dame Vera be commemorated with a public inquiry.
