What a strange, sad little spectacle in the Commons. Keir Starmer’s last PMQs had a lilting, melancholic tone, a mournful background hum. It was all terribly good humoured and gentlemanly. But underneath the mannered speeches there was a sense of tragedy and waste, of a historic squandered opportunity.
This was supposed to be the man who saved the country from decline and political squalor. But he proved utterly ill-suited to the task.
Kemi Badenoch did her best impression of emotional normality. She knew that now was the time to appear generous and sanguine, not partisan or gloating. So she pretended, for a full 10-15 minutes, to be a fully-functioning human being, complete with empathy and a capacity for abstract thought.
At one point she even dedicated a question to the Prime Minister’s family. “I hope he will allow me to draw our time together to a close by thanking them for the love and support they have given him throughout his time in office,” she said, looking like a cat trying to cough up a furball, every fibre of her being rejecting the pleasant words which had to come from her mouth.
She was unable to maintain the act for long. “Life comes at you fast,” she blurted out at one point, her shoulders dropping with relief at no longer having to impersonate a well-rounded human being. “He spent a long time laughing that I’d lost control of my party. I think he should have been paying attention to his backbenchers instead of mine.”
