Yesterday's PMQs

Madeline Grant has a piece in the Spectator about Prime Minister's Questions yesterday.

You can read the whole thing at:

Why is Keir Starmer pretending he’s a serious statesman?

Here are a few extracts:

"The situation in the Middle East inevitably preoccupied questions. Why, asked Mrs Badenoch, were the US allowed to defend British interests and personnel, but the RAF were not. The Prime Minister loves these moments. Never mind the fact that our denuded and depressed armed forces are now having to rely on – of all people – France to defend the sovereign territory which we cannot or will not in Cyprus, Sir Keir had his piece of paper in his hand, and he really believed that we are set for ‘following the due processes of international law in our time’. 

He began by praising his own ‘clarity, purpose and… cool head’, which is quite something given that he goes the colour of a constipated flamingo every time a woman asks him a question he doesn’t like."

"He would be guided by what was possible on ‘legal basis and a viable thought through plan.’ This novel approach will come as news to anyone who has read the Chagos Bill, the assisted suicide legislation, the details of the family farm tax or the plan to abolish trial by jury."


"Mrs Badenoch turned on the government’s record on defence spending. ‘Yesterday the chancellor could have given more money to defence, instead she gave more money to welfare.’ Rachel Reeves reacted furiously to this, straining from her green bench like bewigged chihuahua.  

Given that what Mrs Badenoch had said was indisputable, Sir Keir decided he was going to ignore questions on defence and talk about evacuation plans from the Gulf instead. As he was detailing a flight schedule from Oman a minor noise came from the Tory benches. The Prime Minister stopped and stared, a bundle of pure passive aggression, ‘The country really does want to know this, I’m sorry’, he tutted, as if intoning a great moral judgement on notorious and unrepentant sinners."

"There is an irony here of course. Given the macaque-like screaming from the Labour benches that accompanies any question by Mrs Badenoch – or even worse – by Mr Farage, this seemed a tad hypocritical. It’s very hard to play the grown up in the room when you’re standing there in a soiled nappy and surrounded by the Cabbage Patch Kids. Yet still, this was exactly what Sir Keir tried to do."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten years ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by th...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more