PMQs is always a bit slapdash when the Prime Minister is away and we get the war of the deputies instead, but even by those standards that was an undignified affair. With Keir Starmer in China, Kemi Badenoch got her media fill this morning with a speech on leading a party “about the future, not the past” filled with “serious people”. Then she selected Andrew Griffith to stand in for her.
Badenoch’s novel tactic of rotating who takes the gig when Starmer is away is designed to keep the Labour deputy on their toes, never knowing until the last moment who their opponent will be, making it harder to pre-empt the line of questioning. The problem is that for this to be successful, you need someone who can take advantage of the Deputy PM being caught off guard. The shadow business secretary is not that person.
But let’s start with David Lammy, whose job it is to fill Starmer’s shoes on such occasions. Last time was an unmitigated disaster, with shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge (the shadow justice secretary at the time – a certain Robert Jenrick – was for some strange reason never asked by Badenoch to participate) coming armed with a real “gotcha” question about a mistakenly released prisoner. Lammy obfuscated and blustered, saved only by Cartlidge’s inability to count to six and failure to actually use his ammunition.
This time, Lammy was once again under fire for his lack of preparation. The Justice Secretary did not even pretend to know the answers to the questions Griffith was asking – on the crisis in hospitality, the costs of hiring a young person, and the impact of the government’s business policy. In a normal week, this would make him look unbriefed and unprofessional.
Facing Griffith, however, who often struggled to deliver his prepared lines and failed to build up any momentum whatever, Lammy bulldozed his way through. Sometimes PMQs is criticised for shedding more heat than light. This week we got little of either.
One can sort of understand the Conservative reasoning for going for business as a topic. The big story right now is China, but foreign policy has not massively helped them in recent weeks and while there is plenty to pick apart with regards to Starmer’s Beijing strategy, that’s tricky to land when the Tories’ own position – both now and during their time in government – is far from rock solid. Badenoch wants to cement her party’s credibility on the economy, and there is certainly lots of worrying business news to go around.
But was Griffith really the best person for the job? It’s not just that he was “co-author of the mini-Budget”, as Lammy pointed out (Liz Truss continues to haunt parliament). It’s that he has the oratory style of a student debater auditioning for the role of PMQs interrogator. An attempted gag about “ambitious people like Andy from Manchester, having his dreams crushed by Labour” fell woefully flat, while branding Lammy the “designated survivor” on a day when the real action is several thousand miles eastwards would have had more weight had Griffith himself not been such an obvious understudy. “He’s not going to get this gig again, let’s face it,” Lammy jeered at the end. Sometimes the Commons can be a cruel place.
What did we learn? Well, that Lammy’s father “was run out of business under the Thatcher government” – or, more accurately, that the Deputy PM considers this a robust defence of the government’s business policies. And that whatever Badenoch might say about Nigel Farage spring-cleaning her party, the defections are getting a bit awkward for the Tories. “It’s our party that is getting stronger,” Griffith declared at one point – a valiant effort to seize the narrative, no doubt watched closely by Suella Braverman, making herself comfortable on the Reform bench alongside Andrew Rosindell and Danny Kruger, both also recently of the Tory parish. Who knows, after this performance, maybe he’ll be tempted to join them.
This is not to suggest that Lammy did well. The uncomfortable tensions of the government’s China policy (which is, of course, building on Lammy’s own work as foreign secretary) was raised by the Lib Dems’ Daisy Cooper, who accused Starmer of going “cap-in-hand” to Bejing, having approved the mega-embassy despite spying fears, without achieving any concessions on human rights or the plight of the imprisoned publisher, Jimmy Lai. Lammy took a patronising tone, arguing that ignoring China “would be a dereliction of duty”. He ramped up the condescension on her second question too, on defence spending, deflecting to Labour’s pre-2010 record. There’s deflection, then there’s looking uninterested in the answer.
Overall, though, this was a lacklustre non-event. For a start, there were empty seats across the House – virtually unheard of for PMQs, which often sees MPs sitting on the steps like primary school children – as parliamentary representatives decided to skip this week. Everyone seemed low-energy and fed up. Even Lee Anderson failed to bring the fire. The Reform whip (a more substantial job now than it was a few weeks ago) grinned as he repeated the tired joke about how Labour backbenchers are revolting which he claimed to have heard on TV, only to trigger a chorus of heckles about nothing having a TV licence. He dared Lammy to come with him to a pub and hear first-hand why so many were closing. Lammy’s response was to reminisce about campaigning with Anderson back when the Tory-Reform defector was actually in the Labour Party. Truly, we all need to head to the pub after that.
[Further reading: How a single call sealed Andy Burnham’s fate]
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