With Keir Starmer away at the Nato summit in Ankara, deputy prime minister David Lammy stood in at the despatch box on Wednesday. This was the penultimate PMQs session of the Starmer era. The PM will take his last bow next Wednesday before giving up the reins of the Labour leadership on Friday to Andy Burnham and then giving up the premiership on the following Monday after a handover at Buckingham palace. Here are a few things we learned from the session.
We are in political limbo
It wasn’t just the Prime Minister who was absent today, but the next PM too. Ten minutes or so into Wednesday’s session of Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions James Cleverly, the Tories’ chosen stand in for Kemi Badenoch, finally asked a question that everyone wanted to know the answer to: “the soon-to-be Prime Minister – is he in the room anywhere?” The opposition MPs craned their necks theatrically. “Noooooo.” At another point Labour backbencher Noah Law asked a question which he freely admitted was dependent on what happens “when the right honourable member for Makerfield comes in”.
It was all a reminder that we are currently in a strange interregnum in which no questions of note can be settled without the say-so of Burnham. He has largely steered clear of the Commons chamber since his return to Westminster. Perhaps that will make his first appearance, probably at his first Prime Minister’s Questions in September, all the more triumphant.
Tricky issues won’t go away
In his attempt to embarrass Lammy, who is the current Justice Secretary, Cleverly chose to lead with questions on the early release of prisoners, particularly violent sexual offenders. He demanded government apologies and government guarantees that no rapists or paedophiles would be released later this year as the government attempts to clear prison places. Of course Lammy, who doesn’t know if he will be in the same job in a fortnight, could provide no such guarantees. Cleverly also went after the government’s adjustments to the threshold for jury trials.
In a heated intervention from her place on the front bench, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told Cleverly and the Tories: “you should be apologising; you left this mess.” We again felt the absence of a directing force at the top of government as we wait to see what future, if any, these policies have. Moreover, the tricky questions for Lammy brought home to the Labour benches that a change at the top will not make all of the government’s troubles go away. Burnham could be dining on cans of worms for months.
Burnham’s words could haunt him
While he has entered a period of relative quiet as he prepares for government, Burnham has been a vocal political commentator in recent years alongside his role as Greater Manchester mayor, giving his position on a whole range of issues. As he gets closer to power, the downsides of having stated views in so many areas become more apparent. Take today’s question from Green MP Ellie Chowns, who simply asked Lammy if he would agree with the Makerfield MP’s view that proportional representation in British general elections is an idea “whose time has come”.
Electoral reform, though favoured by the Greens and most Lib Dems, is a highly divisive issue in Labour, not least because PR could result in a whole bunch of Labour MPs losing their seats if we move to a more pluralistic and coalition-based form of politics. Instead of answering, Lammy evaded the point by launching an attack on a Green councillor who had made racist remarks about him and Cleverly, saying that this is where the party should start if it wants to clean up politics. While this time Lammy managed to dodge a difficult question about one of Burnham’s past remarks, the government’s representatives will face many more when the next prime minister takes power.
Farage’s gamble may have backfired
We had to wait for Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper’s round of questions before getting to the big political story of the day: Nigel Farage’s self-engineered by-election fight with Count Binface in Clacton. While less than 24 hours ago Farage was presenting this race as a “people vs the establishment” by-election, it has quickly turned into a by-election fought mainly against a comedian with too much time on his hands, as the main parties made clear they would not stand candidates in an effort to undermine Farage. The strategy seems to have worked, at least on the green benches. The three Reform MPs who attended Wednesday’s session seemed inappropriately angry – shouting “chicken!” (Richard Tice), “cowards!” (Lee Anderson) and “why don’t you stand?” (Sarah Pochin) from their sedentary positions – as the rest of the House laughed at Farage’s Clacton gamble.
[Further reading: Nigel Farage aims to scramble the narrative with his by-election gamble. It won’t work]
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Subscribe here to commentIt must be terribly inconvenient for Farage to be launching a by election campaign in the middle of his summer break in the south of France so we should all thank him for his devotion to the cause of furthering democratic accountability. It will be a rare opportunity however for his constituents to see him in the flesh.