Here’s a key takeaway from PMQs today: the Labour-Lib Dem love-in is well and truly over. Whatever unspoken alliance that existed between Keir Starmer and Ed Davey (who in addition to their knighthoods have a similar outlook in terms of politics and temperament that has been well documented), has been shattered by the series of crisis engulfing the government.
Zooming out, if last week’s PMQs provided a rare moment of real accountability as the Prime Minister admitted he had been warned about Peter Mandelson’s ties to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein before appointing the former as British ambassador to the US, this week we were back to theatrics.
Once again there was no shortage of ammunition for Kemi Badenoch. Starmer’s leadership has been on the brink since the (many) scandalous Mandelson revelations started to break – over the last few days we have had the departure of the PM’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and director of communications Tim Allan, the glacial removal of the cabinet secretary Chris Wormald, plus an intervention calling for a leadership change from the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and yet more speculation of a coup emanating from the general direction of Wes Streeting. Badenoch made fair use of all of this, accusing Starmer of “stratospheric levels of delusion”.
But it is the subject of Matthew Doyle that is currently causing the most consternation. The former Downing Street director of communications was nominated for a peerage in December; two weeks later, it was reported that Doyle had campaigned for Sean Morton, a councillor who had been charged with child sex offences, in 2017. At time of the campaign, Morton had been charged, leading to his suspension from the Labour Party. He pled guilty and was convicted in 2018. The story made the front page of the Sunday Times just after Christmas, but Doyle’s elevation to the House of Lords went ahead anyway.
The parallels to Mandelson, who also had ties to a known paedophile which were in the public domain at the time of his appointment by Starmer, are impossible to ignore. And Badenoch went in hard – skewering not only Starmer’s judgement, but his oft-stated commitment to standing up for victims of sexual violence. “He only cares about victims when he’s trying to save his own skin,” accused the Tory leader, drawing a line between the government’s slow grooming gangs response and attitude taken to Mandelson and Doyle as an “established pattern of behaviour”.
Starmer’s defence, with Doyle as with Mandelson, was that the former chief spinner did not give a full account of his actions during the appointment process, effectively once again deflecting responsibility. Later, SNP leader Stephen Flynn would laughingly call Starmer “the most gullible former Director of Public Prosecutions in history”. Badenoch had a different bruise to punch: “Nobody buys it, not even the Labour women, because they know he always puts the Downing Street boys club first.” Indeed, the frustrations among female Labour MPs and aides about the “boys club” mentality that sees women shut out from key conversations has reached a fever pitch in the past week. The appointment of several women to replace the men who have been forced to depart has not quelled the concern that No.10 has a gender blind spot.
The Tory leader may come to regret her certainty that “We weren’t the ones stuffing government with hypocrites and paedophile apologists”. If association to someone accused of sex crimes is an unforgiveable sin in Westminster, it isn’t only Labour that might want to watch out. Still, this is the attack line we expected from Badenoch.
It was much, much harsher coming from Ed Davey, who bastardised Oscar Wilde to argue: “To appoint one paedophile supporter cannot be excused as misfortune. To appoint two shows a catastrophic lack of judgement.” The Lib Dem leader threw Starmer’s previous words about the dangers of prime ministers who refuse to take responsibility back at him, asking if Starmer still agreed with himself.
Starmer’s response was a blistering – and completely irrelevant – attack on austerity and the Lib Dems’ role in it. Davey replied that he seemed to have “touched a raw nerve”. The antagonism between the pair counted with Davey’s second question on the Hillsborough Law and the need for a duty of candour, with Starmer’ retorting that the Lib Dems could have passed such a law during the coalition years.
No one should be surprised at the Conservatives or the SNP tripping over themselves to land as many blows on Starmer as possible over Doyle and Mandelson. But Davey’s change of tune (also evident last week) is significant. Labour and the Lib Dems have until this point had something of an unofficial pact. The seats the Lib Dems are after are mostly in Conservative areas; there is understood to be little mileage in the two centre-left parties fighting each other. Davey’s PMQs interventions over the past year and a half have at times challenged Starmer, but have generally aimed more fire on the Tories and Reform, and been targeted to pressure the government towards the Lib Dem position on issues such as the EU. Personal attacks traded between the two leaders have not been part of the strategy. Today, we saw that break down completely. With local and devolved elections looming in May, the electoral fragmentation is in overdrive.
Let us end on a note of levity in what is otherwise another bleak week for the government, courtesy of independent MP Ayoub Khan. Rubbish is building up “right beneath my very nose” complained the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, which has been besieged by bin strikes for over a year. A quirk of the House of Commons architecture means that beneath his nose at the moment, sitting in the next row, were the Reform MPs – a point not lost on the rest of the Commons. Nigel Farage and Richard Tice chose to laugh off this not-so-subtle insult; Reform MP Sarah Pochin did not get the memo to appear chill and was visibly furious. Perhaps someone needs a lesson about there being no right not to be offended.
[Further reading: How the Epstein story sidelines women]
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