The Caretaker: PMQs 10th December 2025

People feel there is something wrong about Sir Keir. Quentin Letts says he is boring but to an extraordinary degree. Does the energy drain hint at an emptiness in the PM’s psyche? Someone who dealt with Starmer in his family law days told me “Nothing happened around him. He was good at critiquing others but had no ideas of his own.”

His 1986 Czech workcamp visa shows a man in his mid-twenties, one who should be past teenage angst yet has a curiously intense yet blank gaze. Is this the look of a seeker, someone who needs an ideology; the face of a potential fanatic, ripe for seduction? The French socialist who recruited him at Oxford at about this time said how surprisingly easy it was:

“There is something strange about Keir in general… Normally when you recruit someone… it takes a while. You need to go through lots of stuff. I have no recollection of doing this with him, so that’s kind of strange.”

Kemi Badenoch hopes to see Sir Keir out of Number Ten, but should worry about who would take over. Do the Tories want to face someone who is more effective?

Reportedly Blair is planning a “major intervention” into Labour’s leadership but that is to do with presentation not content. Starmer’s political direction is a continuation of the Blair-Brown mission to destroy conservatism and Middle England permanently. He served the Party’s purpose in defenestrating Corbyn and suckering outsiders into thinking New Labour is more moderate; but Sir Keir himself is too obviously far Left, and charmless to boot. Kemi should help keep him in place until next May’s elections at least.

That’s assuming we’re all still here then. For in his preamble in this week’s session the PM paid tribute to a member of the Parachute Regiment who has been killed in Ukraine, so confirming that we have boots on the ground opposing Russia. Sir Keir stressed that the soldier was away from the front lines and merely observing. Who are we to doubt his word? Yet the US involvement in Vietnam also began with “military advisers” and unlike Hanoi Moscow has nuclear weapons and a stated willingness to use them.

The first two questions did the Labour PR work formerly done in Starmer’s preambles before the Speaker blew up about it last week. Sarah Olney (Lib Dem) asked for clarity on “leave to remain” for a couple of her constituents, which allowed the PM to say (twice) that Britain was “compassionate” to refugees. Labour’s Rachael Maskell raised last week’s issue of lifting children out of poverty; Starmer was glad to respond positively and to criticise Badenoch’s view that maternity pay is “excessive.” There, that raised a couple of emoji flags against the Nasty Party.

The Leader of the Opposition had fun teasing Sir Keir with queries about targets he hadn’t met and with calling him a caretaker PM. As we have said, she should fear premature success. Starmer replied with his usual broad-spectrum counterattacks and yet again used Liz Truss’ name as a sort of Patronus Charm to ward off the evil Tories.

The Lib Dem leader worried about President Trump’s new national security strategy and its “far-right tropes” of “civilizational erasure”; Sir Ed’s Patronus Charm was to wave Vladimir Putin at us, for that wicked Slav has welcomed the strategy. The PM told Davey:

“What I see is a strong Europe united behind Ukraine and united behind our long-standing values of freedom and democracy, and I will always stand up for those values and freedoms.”

To adapt Claud Cockburn, disbelieve nothing until it is officially confirmed.

What a shame that Soviet communism collapsed; it had been such a convenient bogeyman for generations and in its absence we feel no need to defend personal freedom and the nation state. Instead the heads of the Army and MI6 ramp up scare talk of war and that will justify further Government assaults on civil liberties; if the “superflu” woo-woo doesn’t do the job first.

Dave concluded with his familiar call for a customs union with the EU, which would wreck the advantageous trade arrangements we have been able to make as a result of Brexit. Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts seconded him and was again reminded of the negotiating edge given us by Leaving.

Not that Starmer’s heart isn’t in the “right place” as the decision to re-join the EU’s Erasmus scheme shows (how many foreign student visas will that validate?) He and Brussels are like a re-run of “My Wife Next Door.”

It will get worse before it gets better. Our only hope is that we retain enough of our identity and love of country to rebuild afterwards, as the Poles rebuilt Warsaw’s Old Town.