A moment of profound national unseriousness

“This,” Kemi Badenoch told the House of Commons, “is a moment of profound national seriousness.” It was an unarguable point. We may look back on this as a time when Britain faced the greatest challenges in decades, with more and more parts of the world in flames, a hostile government in Washington, Russia on the march, China testing boundaries, and our critical energy supplies under threat. 

If the country does indeed stand on the brink, then there was precious little evidence in Parliament on Wednesday that we are ready for it

Which made it all the stranger that, in the very same breath, the Conservative leader noted that a Labour MP had given an interview about sex toys. “It gives a whole new meaning,” Badenoch went on, “to fiddling while Rome burns.” I shall have to check whether Winston Churchill also lightened his wartime speeches with gags about wanking.

If the country does indeed stand on the brink, then there was precious little evidence in Parliament on Wednesday that we are ready for it. Badenoch’s task for Prime Minister’s Questions had been made a great deal easier by the decision of Lord Robertson to lay into the government for not moving faster on defence spending. As the Tory leader pointed out, Robertson is a Labour man with heft, and his criticisms are not that different from her own. To go public like this will have been for him a move of last resort.

Badenoch was so pleased about all this that she made a point of telling us that she’d gone to a briefing from Robertson last year. It wouldn’t normally be noteworthy that the leader of the opposition had done their homework, but these days it really is.

Keir Starmer’s response was, as ever, that he inherited a mess and is doing his best. The last part of that may not be the argument he thinks it is. The much-delayed Defence Investment Plan would, he said, be published “as soon as possible”. 

The Tories greeted that with a bitter laugh. Now that they are in opposition, they are all gung-ho for military spending. It is a tragedy that they’ve discovered this enthusiasm just too late to actually do anything about it. 

The prime minister still had his big card: Badenoch’s constantly evolving position on Iran. The latest version of this is a claim that all she ever wanted to do was give “verbal support” to Donald Trump’s war. “I suppose,” Starmer said, “that is standing on the sidelines and saying, ‘Get in there!’”

Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, is losing patience with the prime minister’s attempts to change the subject to the Tory leader’s failings, and cut him off once, but Starmer is nothing if not dogged. When he next rose, he simply carried on where he’d left off. 

He also tried out a new persona, a furious side of himself that we can think of as Kross Keir. “I remember walking into this chamber,” he said, “saying that we would not get drawn into the war and would not join the offensive, and they all shouted, ‘Shame!’ They remember it—” he was actually snarling now “— I remember it. They are just embarrassed by it now.”

Ed Davey once again made the most of being the only leader who feels able to be rude about Trump, citing a threat to rip up the US-UK trade deal if Britain doesn’t join whatever this afternoon’s American military strategy is. “Surely,” Davey asked, “the prime minister cannot send our King to meet a man who treats our country like a mafia boss running a protection racket?”

The prime minister acknowledged that he was under “a lot of pressure” from the US. “I am not going to change my mind,” he intoned, a headmaster telling us that the Year 10 trip to the pencil museum was staying cancelled. “I am not going to yield.”

Davey remained anxious about His Majesty’s trip. “President Trump is one of the most unpredictable people we have seen on the world stage,” he said, “and I hope that he does not embarrass our monarch.” These days, the main person Trump is embarrassing is himself.

The Liberal Democrat leader’s second question was about the European Union and elicited an interesting reply. “I have made it very clear that I think our national interest lies in close relations with the EU on defence, security, energy and the economy,” Starmer said. “We have another summit this year, where I intend not just to make good on what we have already agreed, but to go closer to the EU in the relations that we have.”

And there it was. The Brexit Betrayal. The moment Boris Johnson had warned us about so many times. Words that Labour has felt unable to say for a decade were out there. And how did the Tory and Reform benches take this? Silence. 

What had been unsayable now passes without comment. Oh Farage, where is thy sting? Oh Boris, where is thy victory? Gone, in the twinkling of an eye.