Discourtesy – PMQs 4th June 2025

The PM’s rough manners and disregard for relevance have worsened.

Jesse Norman MP (Con) raised a point of order at the end of the session, asking the Speaker ‘Could you give us some guidance on whether you may be able to control answers when they are wildly inappropriate?’

The instance Norman cited was when Badenoch asked Starmer about the two-child benefit cap and instead was slapped with a reference to the Kremlin because they appreciated her admission that the Ukraine conflict was a ‘proxy war’ with Russia. (Make that ‘poxy’: not just despicable but contagious and deadly dangerous.)

The Russophobia is a threadbare theme but cheap shots are Sir Keir’s stock in trade; money for old trope? It is curious that he should exploit it now that Russia is a sort of democracy and our country is led by someone suspected of Communistic instincts.

Writing in The Spectator Madeline Grant developed this point, likening the PM to a late-Soviet Leonid Brezhnev assuring us that all is going well. In the Daily Mail Quentin Letts also notes how Starmer has become ‘idly, sarcastically evasive.’

When you have enough power you can speak nonsense to the people but if they protest it’s off to the Lubyanka with them.

And what nonsense it is! Sir Keir’s aggressive 1984-style quacking mismatches responses to queries. Does Reform’s Sarah Pochin suggest banning the burqa, as in several European Countries? She receives a graceless refusal to reply; instead she is told to speak to her leader about unfunded tax cuts; to remember Liz Truss; and anyway I got a rabbit!

Strike that last: Starmer’s egregious arrogance hasn’t yet spilled over into ‘second childishness and mere oblivion.’ But power has gone to his head. Only he can call an early General Election and not even a Labour Party vote of no confidence can remove him. ‘You have me for another four years, ha ha!’

We must be thankful that the PM bothers to face interrogation at all. One of his mentor Tony Blair’s first acts was to consolidate twice-weekly PMQs into a single meeting; as Ian Taylor (Con) then commented, ‘I warmly welcome the Prime Minister to his role of answering questions and I am grateful to him for finding the time in his diary to do so. At some point he might consult the House about these changes.’ Arbitrarily cut down from two, but as Lear’s daughter Regan asks, ‘What needs one?’ Like the old king, we are impotent, must take what we are given.

Here is Sir Keir, commanding an Opposition-crushing Parliamentary majority. He may do as he pleases, for as long as he pleases.

Yet his overwhelming advantage is based on the ballots of only twenty per cent of the electorate. As Tony Benn said in 1991: ‘If people lose the power to sack their Government, one of several things happens. First, people may just slope off. Apathy could destroy democracy. When the turnout drops below 50 per cent., we are in danger.’

The danger is that the very basis of the Prime Minister’s right to rule comes into question when his support among the people is so slender and his opposition there so great and growing. Starmer’s rapprochement with the European Union in particular runs against our clearly expressed wish – no, our instruction, since the main Parties’ undertaking to carry out the result of the 2016 Referendum turned it into a plebiscite. Our claim to be a democracy is being tested. Where on the line from absolute monarchical rule (albeit delegated to the First Minister) to full republic do we sit?

What may we do when our representatives cease to represent us? In 1774 Edmund Burke told his Bristol electors that his duty was not to follow their opinion but to exercise his judgment in their interest; now, it seems our MPs have done neither. How was it in our interest to lose our sovereignty? Whose right was it to decide that?

We owe a debt of thanks to Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Mr Blair. In a 2009 article in the London Evening Standard he said that New Labour’s immigration policy was (in his estimation) partly intended ‘to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.’ 

Source: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2025/06/discourtesy-pmqs-4th-june-2025.html