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He had one job. ONE. JOB. Well, technically there might have been two, but we’ll come to that later. But one main job. And that’s to be able to count to six. That’s how many questions the leader of the opposition gets to ask at prime minister’s questions. It’s been that way since Tony Blair planted himself in Downing Street in 1997 and turned the spectacle from twice a week to one extended session. You wouldn’t have thought it was so hard to grasp. There again, some people find even the most basic maths challenging.
Alas, poor James! You might not have heard of James Cartlidge. No shame there. Join 99.9% of the population. And if you had heard of him, you may not have known that he is the shadow defence secretary. No shame there either. Join 99.9% of Tory MPs. Put simply, James is instantly forgettable. Even to his own acquaintances. He has risen without trace. The best exponent of the Dunning-Kruger effect since Danny Kruger.
And right now, Jimmy C will be more than pleased if all this stays that way. That he slips beneath every radar. Because right now he has locked himself inside a cupboard and is refusing to come out. Two shrinks have been brought in from the Priory to try to get him to come out quietly. “It’s OK,” they can be heard saying. “It’s safe now. Everyone has gone away. Who are you again?”
With Keir Starmer away in Brazil at Cop30, Kemi Badenoch had used the opportunity to go to Aberdeen to make the case for fossil fuels – it’s almost as if she comes pre-programmed to be misguided on everything – so this week’s PMQs was left in the less than capable hands of the deputies. Or not the deputy, in Kemi’s case.
Technically, the deputy leader of the Tories is Alex Burghart. Another name that self-destructs long before the end of any sentence in which it appears. Only, poor old Alex is not really trusted to do the one thing the job actually involves. He was once allowed out at the dispatch box but was so hopeless he has never been seen again. Since then, Mel Stride, Chris Philp and James Cleverly have all been given a runout. And all have been gratifyingly useless. Though no more so than Kemi usually is herself. But she is the only one who gets to repeat her incompetence.
So this week it was the turn of Jimmy C to take the blue corner. Plucked from obscurity. Destined to return there within minutes. And in the red corner we had David Lammy, also making his PMQs debut after the defenestration of Angela Rayner.
Come the end of the session, David must have wanted to give Jimmy C a big hug. What might otherwise have been considered something of a disaster for Lammy passed off as relatively minor collateral damage. Almost as if Cartlidge was working undercover for the Labour party.
The kindest thing that could be said of Jimmy C was that he started badly and got worse. Twice he demanded Lammy apologise to the parents of the child abused by the later mistakenly released asylum seeker. Twice Lammy pointed out that he had already done so and would be happy to do so again. Cartlidge apparently couldn’t take yes for an answer.
Jimmy C then turned his attention elsewhere. Did Lammy know if any other asylum seeker sex offenders had been mistakenly released from prison? A very specific question. One that alerted the whole house to the fact that Cartlidge thought he had an ace up his sleeve. That he had knowledge of just such a case. But Lammy just got a bit angry and blurted out that it was the Tories who had left the justice system in such a mess.
This was all … weird. How come Lammy was the only person not to see the direction these questions were heading? That we were building up to some major gotcha. As justice secretary, he would surely have been told of any more prisoners who had been mistakenly released. Why not say there was an ongoing investigation? That for every month the Tories were in office there were 17 prisoners mistakenly released. One every two days. The system was in tatters. He was trying to mend it. Play for time. Instead, he just kept blustering. Perhaps he panicked. Couldn’t think quickly enough on his feet.
Only, the gotcha never came. Because Jimmy C couldn’t count to six. Four times he demanded to know what Lammy knew, but he never got to reveal what he himself knew. He crumpled in embarrassment. Burghart tried to comfort him. Insincerely. He was just thrilled this all hadn’t happened to him. There but for the grace of God … Cartlidge affected outrage. The speaker had miscounted. He hadn’t. The buck stopped with Jimmy C.
Cartlidge then tried to pass a message back to Tory MPs on the backbenches who were also down for questions. Ditch what you were going to ask and come to the rescue of the party. It looked like Rishi Sunak might oblige. Only Rishi clearly doesn’t much care for Jimmy C. Perhaps they have history. Instead, Rishi asked about prostate cancer. All that Cartlidge could do was make a point of order at the end. There had been another asylum seeker released. Only it turned out there hadn’t. The man in question wasn’t an asylum seeker. Cue tears on the Tory benches. On a day of fuck-ups, this was perhaps the biggest yet.
This wasn’t the only ongoing drama. Lammy had made the schoolboy error of turning up without a poppy. This is politics 101. MPs make a point of competitive poppy wearing – I saw one MP with three in his lapel – and Lammy should have been aware of that. The rightwing media was outraged. HOW COULD HE HATE OUR VETERANS SO MUCH? Bridget Phillipson desperately tried to hunt down a poppy for David. It was Calvin Bailey, a genuine war veteran, who answered the call of duty. Fifteen minutes in and Lammy’s honour was saved. Though there were some who would never forgive him.
It had all been an early pantomime. A farce in which the serious business of a failing prison system once again took second place. Even the Tories can’t be bothered to get their facts right. Though that didn’t stop Kemi repeating the error on X. Still, there were two winners. The real role of a deputy is to make the leaders look good. Jimmy C and David had done Kemi and Keir proud.
