QUENTIN LETTS at PMQs: Rayner blustered at Tory Boy’s canny question… Grendel’s Mother taken by surprise_Nhy
We had a Buddhist monk in an upstairs gallery for PMQs. He was the first I have seen here since the Dalai Lama gave evidence to the foreign affairs select committee in 2008.
Back then I asked His Holiness what he kept in his manbag. He rooted around in it and produced a banana, saying ‘my lunch!’
A year later David Miliband tried the same trick of brandishing a banana and his career never really recovered.
There sat our latest Buddhist visitor, the very model of meditative austerity, steeped in monastic traditions of equanimity and compassion, honesty and joy. Years of discipline and inner searching had brought him to this pass. Below, now, was the packed House of Commons, supposedly one of the world’s great crucibles of dialectic.
As the chamber went through its Wednesday rituals it became the usual wriggling, groin-scratching, hog-whimpering vat of confected outrage, envy, casual deceit and bogus misery.
The holy man, resisting any temptation to say ‘ohhhhmmmm!’, or even to scream, kept a dispassionate expression. I don’t know if Buddhist monks play cards but he would have been mustard at poker.
Starmer Tours was still away on its latest jaunt, in Brazil. Did you see those frightful trousers and gym shoes the PM wore for his meeting with Canada‘s Justin Trudeau? What sort of 62-year-old Englishman dresses like that?
In Sir Keir’s absence it was a day, as they say, for No 2s. The Government was represented by the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner (pictured)
Ms Rayner was opposed by the Tories’ Alex Burghart, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (pictured)
In Sir Keir’s absence it was a day, as they say, for No 2s. The Government was represented by the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner. She was opposed by the Tories’ Alex Burghart, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Mr Burghart is, at first glance, your classic Tory Boy: dark suit, suavely confident, a floppy centre-parting smeared with gel or lard. He has one of those assertive voices that cuts through whale fat. Yet Mr Burghart is more interesting than that stereotype.
He was once a history teacher and an academic, specialising in the Anglo-Saxon era. A man who might know his Beowulf.
Cannily, he kept his first question short. ‘What is the Government doing to bring down inflation?’
The brevity took Grendel’s Mother by surprise. She blustered, laughed, and then noted that Mr Burghart had been Liz Truss’s minister for growth. Labour MPs think any mention of the Truss government will rescue them from a tight spot.
‘We’re doing much better than he did!’ roared Mrs Rayner in that gobby manner she has made her own. Mr Burghart thanked her for ‘her standard charm’. He proceeded to note that ‘City economists, real economists’ were forecasting a jump in inflation.
‘Real economists’ was a jibe at Rachel Reeves, whose CV seems to have had as much topspin as an Andy Murray backhand.
When Ms Reeves heard the remark she flinched: a convulsive hand movement and she threw back her hair in classic displacement activity. Less good at poker than our Buddhist visitor, one fears.
Sir Keir Starmer showed off a pair of £200 designer trainers as he dressed down for a beer with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau at the G20 summit in Brazil yesterday
Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle speaks during the Prime Minister’s Questions at the House of Commons today
Speaker Hoyle was having trouble from both sides. At one point he gave a tremendous rocket to Danny Kruger (Con, E Wilts).
A hurt Mr Kruger: ‘I haven’t moved my mouth.’ Speaker Hoyle snapped that he must be a ventriloquist. But he later apologised, for it was one of Mr Kruger’s neighbours who had bellowed the rudery.
On we surged, cackling laughter and rhubarb on all sides. Mr Burghart added to the din, shouting so much he seemed to break his microphone. Mrs Rayner, who is more accustomed to being the noisy one, seemed off her oats.
After another deafening question from Mr Burghart about how Labour had broken its promises to farmers Mrs Rayner retorted: ‘It’s an audacity for him to stand there and suggest that Labour breaks promises.’
Tory, Reform and Scots Nat MPs laughed hard. Strikingly, Labour MPs sat in glum silence.
That is the first time we have seen the new Labour benches look properly skittled. The economic damage of that Reeves Budget may finally be starting to register.
