Combustible Kemi In Danger of Consuming Herself – Guido Fawkes

What a piece of work is the Prime Minister. His world is collapsing around him. He is despised by the electorate and two-thirds of his party. His “first female Chancellor” has crashed the economy. His net zero policy is a weapon of war given to our mortal enemies. His “adults-in-the-room” Government is behaving like spastic children on a sugar rush – and yet he is not only on his feet, he is cheerful, confident and at PMQs, still giving better than he gets.

This is all very hard to set down. But there is worse. Ed Davey’ measured contributions are those befitting a senior governmental presence – “We will reserve judgement on that,” he dares to say out loud. His sturdy anti-genocide stance plays well with at least half the anti-genocide public. His intent listening face conveys the belief that what he has said deserves to be heard. He is clearly pitching for deputy prime minister in a Lab-Lib coalition.

Given the performance of Kemi’s completely useless New Tories, a left-of-centre government with Green outriders is a real possibility.

The one thing his young and inexperienced opponent had over him was asking him factual questions that he couldn’t answer and baiting him into losing his temper.

It was a promising strategy. An angry person is at best ridiculous. But the PM, for all his clunkiness shows himself to be more supple than her. He turned the strategy against her and baited her to the point where she looked dangerously close to losing her temper herself.

At the end of a wild and whirling 150 words she concluded with her question: “[The Chancellor] will have to pay for all of these U-turns which she’s announcing out there, isn’t she?”

The PM replied with 177 words on Moscow’s approving response to her Ukraine interview on Sky.

Kemi caught fire. Her arms waved. Her decibels doubled. She pointed. Her eyes blazed. It was slightly embarrassing. “He doesn’t have answers. It’s disgraceful. I asked him, I asked him, I asked him” then there was, at speed, the two-child benefit cap, the Kremlin, the economy, the OECD downgrading growth, tax rises, police chiefs wanting more money, criminals on the streets, border chaos, Chagos Islands, trade deal and 25% steel tariffs, “It’s chaos, chaos, chaos!”

A fairly neat description of her performance at the time. “Let’s move on to another area of confusion,” she said.

The fact that the PM is still able to say the things he does – that the economy was in a terrible state at handover, that there was a £22 billion black hole and that Liz Truss crashed the economy – that is the most objective critique of the Conservative leader.

Sarah Pochin, Reform’s new MP, asked a short, sharp question to enrage Labour. “In the interests of public safety, will he follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and ban the burqa.”

Keir has adapted himself here as well. His capacity for bruising women has been noted and he has, with suppleness, changed. “Can I welcome her to her place?” he said, with a noblesse oblige he must have observed in David Cameron. And then, “I’m not going to follow her down that line.” He was, as is so often the case these days, following Nigel Farage’s line to the letter.

Bolsover’s Natalie Fleet inherited the Beasthood from Denis Skinner and is wearing the shirt with pride. With four I’s and/or Me’s, she pledged to do everything she could in the House to speak out for “badly-let-down rape victims” (as long as, I suspect, their rapist was white).

“Gaza is a stain on the soul of humanity,” Claire Hanna told the House (you need an Irish eloquence to get away with that in the Chamber). And Brendan O’Hara laid an excellent trap of a question by noting the PM had instructed counsel to argue that “no genocide has occurred” in the region, contrary to the PM’s parliamentary position.

It would be nice to hear someone on the Treasury benches suggest that Palestinians voted for a government with actual genocide of Jews written into its constitution in black letter law. But the PM rebutted without refuting the point, saying O’Hara supported nuclear disarmament.

As the Speaker noted, to Jesse Norman’s point of order on the PM’s catherine wheel answers – it was ever thus.