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Well, that went well, didn’t it? Weeks of finding new and ever more ingenious ways to flatter the US president. Extolling the brilliance of Donald Trump being able to tie his own shoelaces. “That’s incredible, Mr President. No one has ever managed to do that so beautifully.” No chance for flattery has been passed up. It is now the sign of the highest IQ not to be able to speak in joined up sentences. To change your mind at a moment’s notice. Yet at all times, Keir Starmer has remained a paragon of obsequiousness. Not a word out of place.
And what do we get for it? The occasional hint of recognition from the Donald. Which we cling to. Attempting to find meaning in something essentially meaningless. Something that came with little thought. And now we also are landed with 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium. A reward for obeisance. That’s the thing with Trump. He gets angry if he’s disrespected but has nothing but contempt for those who humour him. He’s a complicated proposition.
We are where we are. The special relationship is being redefined. We are now locked in a trade war with our closest ally. Even rightwing economists are struggling to make sense of this. Our response? To keep our head down. To sound tough by saying all options are on the table when our Pavlovian response is to do nothing. To take it on the chin. Hope it will go away of its own accord as casually as it was introduced. Which indeed it might. Trump is nothing if not inconsistent.
But it’s come to something when doing nothing and continuing to pander to the president’s ego is seen as an act of diplomatic genius. For it is looking more and more as if Starmer has played a blinder on the international stage as he navigates his way through the Washington swamp.
He is up there vying with Emmanuel Macron in the race to lead the European resistance – Starmer got his Zoom invitations for the weekend’s summit out early – and even his fiercest critics at home haven’t got a bad word to say about his efforts. There is a universal recognition that Trump-wrangling is an acquired art and that Keir is better than most at it.
Even so, you’d have thought there would be some interest in discussing the tariffs imposed overnight. For their novelty value if nothing else. But at prime minister’s questions there was almost an omertà. Kemi Badenoch had nothing to say.
The only person to mention tariffs was Ed Davey and he sounded almost apologetic for doing so. Keir just gave the non-answer of “all options on the table” and then everyone could go back to ignoring them again. They all might wake up the next day and find it had all just been a bad dream. Just fly beneath the radar. We live in strange times in which everyone thinks this is not just normal but a stroke of genius.
All of which might help to explain why PMQs is no longer quite the draw it used to be. The Labour benches are still full – there’s plenty of MPs to go round and they aren’t shy of currying favour with a friendly question – but as the weeks go by there are larger and larger gaps on the opposition benches. Tory MPs have long since given up on Kemi and can no longer be bothered to offer their support.
Those MPs who had dragged themselves to the chamber seem mostly preoccupied with the ongoing battle between the comedy legends Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe. Fair to say that when so much of the news is depressing, the falling out between the People’s Front of Reform and the Reform People’s Front has given Westminster a much-needed tonic. In the battle of the narcissists, the fight goes on between being covertly or overtly racist as Nige and Rupert trade insults over “Pakistani rape gangs”. It’s niche entertainment. But beggars can’t be choosers.
Disappointingly, even though Nige and Lee Anderson made a point of showing up with Jim McMurdock, there was no sign of Rupert. Presumably he isn’t at all sure where he wants to sit. His natural habitat – the bench reserved for those independents who have fallen out with their leadership – is all taken up with disgruntled Corbynistas and Muslims. Neither of whom are Lowe’s preferred bedfellows.
As for the Tories, it was yet another day of disappointment for them as Kemi once more let them down. Chris Philp tried to offer her encouragement with his trademark manspreading and union jack socks but even he looked as if he would rather be somewhere else.
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But then so did Badenoch. You could sense her heart was just not in it. Her minders may have steered her away from her former bonkers style of questioning, so that now she can more or less land in the areas where she needs to be. But she just sounded as if she was boring herself by asking about the economy. Kemi lives for internet conspiracy theories. Arcane culture wars. Those are what get her out of bed in the morning. The nuts and bolts of everyday domestic politics leave her cold. This can’t go on. Though it would suit Labour if it did.
Starmer navigated all this with ease. I guess that after Trump, dealing with Kemi must feel like a doddle. Besides which, there is still mileage yet in pointing out that it was the Tories who crashed the economy. Not that Starmer got it all his own way. The Labour backbencher Richard Burgon hit a nerve by asking whether it might be better to raise money with a wealth tax than by cutting benefits. Keir rather equivocated. He feels he has done his bit with the rich and now he’s after the poor. In the nicest possible way. Naturally.
Straight after PMQs, we had a statement on the closure of the sustainable farming incentive scheme to new applications, which Steve Reed gracelessly left to a junior minister. You had to feel sorry for Daniel Zeichner. He hadn’t come in to politics to be laughed at for trying to claim that we should be celebrating the closure of a successful scheme rather than apologise to farmers for removing another subsidy. What David Cameron used to call “the green crap”. Still, I guess Labour feels it burned its bridges with the farmers long ago. In for a penny …
