From Conservative Chaos to Labour Chaos, Continuity Is Everything – Guido Fawkes

In the session today, we were told that the “thoughts of the whole House” are with the Duke of Kent, Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, the casualty of a fire in the west country, farmers, and the partner of a deceased Welsh Senator.

The thoughts of the whole House were very far away from any of that. There was only one thought of the whole House: what will it mean for me when Keir Starmer gets thrown out of a first-floor window onto Downing Street? The front bench, staring into the middle distance, was entirely preoccupied with that prime ministerial trajectory.

Friends of Kemi, that exclusive group, will take some heart from today’s performance. She was less bad than she has been, although no more memorable. In manner she was quiet, she was softly-softly, the matter was that serious. In three questions she didn’t raise her voice and she held the House. That sort of silence creates a stage for great drama and it takes nerve. She held hers and it paid off. The words “child sex offences” made it hard for Labour to laugh at her (“cancer” and “disabled child” also useful there). The words “Lord Mandelson” directly adjacent to “convicted of child prostitution” gave off a frisson of awe and pity.

It didn’t do any good. Keir blocked her twice with some parliamentary piffle about process. The vetting was all done by the book “full due process was gone through”.

Would he publish all the documents of government vetting? Would he “actually instruct Peter Mandelson to publish all his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein?”

“Eff off, darling,” the PM said, or something like it.

She tried to get under his skin but the hide he’s developed doesn’t seem to have an underneath.

In the end, she found herself saying, “It is embarrassing that the Prime Minister is still saying that he has confidence in a man who has brokered deals with convicted child sex offenders while sitting in government.”

Is embarrassing the word? With the world on the brink of WW III, Russian drones over Europe, global cyber-attacks and a Fall-of-Rome invasion from the global majority – embarrassment isn’t the greatest attack line. It’s true that for true-born English people embarrassment is a greater fear than death – but Keir Starmer is supra-national. He doesn’t feel embarrassment. He has become one with the global Elohim, the Illuminati, the gods of the lower atmosphere. He is beyond our reach. He stands at the despatch box with all the confidence of a winner, a success, a Mosaic leader.

Governmental chaos doesn’t touch him – let alone the crashed economy, the migrant invasion, the lawless streets, the ascendent unions, the brain drain, the wealth flight, the record bond rates, the imminent apocalypse. How else can he face the country he has midwifed without collapsing in shame and self-loathing?

LOTO made a number of remarks, aggression laced with an exulting contempt.

“It does not matter how many relaunches and flip-flops he does – he will always be Mr Nobody,” was a particularly brutal assault. “When is he going to stop pretending that up is down and black is white, and admit that whether it is on the economy, immigration or the NHS, he has failed? He knows that debt is not falling and taxes are going up. His Government appear blissfully uninterested in what is going on outside the walls of Westminster. Does he realise how ludicrous it looks when he spends his time boasting while Britain is breaking? Does the country not deserve so much better than a Prime Minister who simply does not get Britain?”

Was it fair? Was it proper? It was certainly bruising, delivered with great male conviction – the LOTO in question was Keir Starmer castigating that nice Rishi Sunak in the New Year of 2024.

If there is a lesson there it’s that Oppositions doing this opposing thing is a mug’s game. With Reform biding their time, the “party opposite” needs to behave not like an opposition but like a government in waiting.

Had she done so today, Kemi would have flaunted a little Tory support for welfare reform in her peroration and thereby achieved on the floor of the House what no criticism can – a split in the Government benches. Labour’s left would have re-dedicated itself that No 10 glazing project by getting behind Dawn Butler as deputy leader.

Kemi missed the open goal of Angela Rayner last week, and this week failed to follow up on her press conference launch offering her party in the Government lobby.

All our leaders are having to learn on the job how to do their jobs. Let’s hope Reform have some freakishly fast learners.

PS: The day’s AI transcription service rendered Mr Speaker’s “Kemi Badenoch!” as ‘Can we bear the loss?’ What do we think – can we?