See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 16:23 BST, 15 July 2026 | Updated: 17:02 BST, 15 July 2026
Boxes of Kleenex to the stage door, Norman. Sir Keir Starmer’s final PMQs was a blubfest, a three-hanky affair, a display of guilty sentimentalism as bad as anything since assassin Macbeth’s distress at the demise of Duncan.We had a waterfall of crocodile tears. Labour MPs did whimpering Stan Laurel impressions, chins crumpling as Sir Keir – the man they couldn’t dump fast enough – took his leave of them. The old booby himself did rather well. Nothing became him in his premiership like his parting. But the weepiness on the Labour benches was wonderful. Four hundred hypocrites. The sham squad.Sir Keir arrived on the scaffold at 11.58am. How they cheered! Order papers were waved, the House fuller than for months. In the VIPs’ box behind the Serjeant at Arms sat some of the Starmer family, including the PM’s wife Victoria, in scarlet. Upstairs perched Lord Hermer, pink-faced. Poor little Hermer. When Marie Antoinette was executed her lapdog Thisbe howled and howled and had to be put out of its misery. Ruff game, politics.Speaker Hoyle opened with kind words about Sir Keir and his family. That nearly set off Sir Keir. Lady Starmer was mentioned a lot. Each time, Sir Keir pumped his upper lip. Alongside him on the front bench were his star players, if we can call them that: David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Liz Kendall, Scary Bridget. Three of that quartet were in tears by the end of proceedings. No prizes for guessing which one was dry-eyed.Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley & Holderness) observed that Sir Keir had been shown the red card by ‘400 dodgy referees’. Sir Keir enjoyed that. He likes anything to do with football. One of the odd things about him was the narrowness of his interests. There was almost never a mention of fiction, art, cooking or even music, despite his abilities with a flute. His conversation had little range. There was no armoury of references for his wretched speech-writers. ‘I have an important engagement with the television at 8pm,’ he said. Its Pooterishness made people laugh. Alongside Keir Starmer on the front bench were his star players, if we can call them that Mrs Badenoch addressed the Labour benches ‘with as much goodwill as I can muster’ and said that bumping off PMs was seldom the answerThe Chancellor, throughout, teetered on the verge of waterworks. Like Red Adair, we waited for her gaskets to blow. Labour Party chairman Anna Turley was soon dewy-eyed with sadness.As the session continued and everyone kept insisting what a brick Sir Keir had been – I think it was brick, anyway – Andy Burnham’s absence started to become tangible. Unusually, Ed Miliband had turned up. Angela Rayner was beside Dame Emily Thornberry, who was doing one of her Boris Yeltsin impressions. But where was Makerfield’s Macbeth and his accomplice Louise Haigh?Kemi Badenoch was, this final time, gentle with the nasal knight, and he with her. Now they have a common foe: rotter Burnham. Mrs Badenoch addressed the Labour benches ‘with as much goodwill as I can muster’ and said that bumping off PMs was seldom the answer. ‘Labour’s problems may only just be beginning,’ she said. Cue a few gulps.On it dragged, each backbencher’s lame jokes about football or the Clacton by-election becoming progressively groansome. Sir Keir had to endure a friendly question from Rachael Maskell (Lab, York C), whose agitating against benefits cuts last autumn so wounded his government. He was too much the dutiful stick to tell the daft woman to get stuffed. Instead he repeatedly claimed that he had ‘fixed the economy’ and ‘left the country in better shape’. A Conservative heckler: ‘No you didn’t.’Carolyn Harris (Lab, Swansea E) had the last question but nearly didn’t get through it, she was so distressed. Tears were now coursing down Ms Reeves’s cheeks. Liz Kendall had succumbed. Lammy mopped his hooter. Up in the gallery, Lord Hermer was inconsolable, a grieving diva from Italian opera.‘I love you,’ said Sir Keir to his family. ‘Goodbye!’ He departed through a tunnel of sobbing handmaidens behind the Chair and Speaker Hoyle finally got the two-faced stinkards to cease clapping the prime minister they had so casually destroyed.
