Hoyle’s Law

There was a frisson of excitement at Prime Minister’s Questions, as we saw that Harriet from The Traitors, a noted author of detective fiction, was in the Gallery. Lindsay Hoyle took the opportunity to pitch a new book series about a mild-mannered Commons Speaker who also solves crimes.

In this week’s episode of Hoyle’s Law, our hero is taking a well-earned fact-finding trip to the British Virgin Islands when he learns that criminal suspect Peter “Mandy” Mandelson may be about to flee there. “I passed this on to the Metropolitan Police in good faith,” the Speaker announced in Wednesday morning, explaining why the arrested peer was blaming someone in Parliament for telling the cops he might abscond. Mysteries remain, chiefly about the clue that Hoyle spotted. Did his hotel put him in the Mandelson Suite? Were they laying in extra stocks of guacamole?

Harriet from The Traitors was the BBC show’s break-out star in January, although pedants might note that she achieved this by spraying accusations around the room and then blowing herself up. Which brings us to Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader has a spring in her step, thanks to a recent revamp in her approach that has seen her party soar to third place in the polls, narrowly ahead of the Greens.

She opened prime minister’s questions with a zinger. “My party is under new leadership,” she told Keir Starmer. “A lot of people wish his was, too!”

The prime minister’s team had clearly seen this coming, because he was equipped with a comeback: “Certainly many in her party are under new leadership. They’re up there!” He pointed to the expanding Reform bench.

That was it for witty badinage. Badenoch had a more memorable, if nastier, attack waiting. “He should explain,” she told the prime minister, “why his backbenchers are saying that they’re being called the Paedo Defenders Party.” This got a howl of outrage from the government benches. The phrase has indeed cropped up in the mouths of Labour MPs, attributed to at least one voter, but using it in the chamber was an escalation. Next to Badenoch, Mel Stride shifted uncomfortably. His style is more along the lines of quoting Shakespeare.

The protests from Labour continued. “I didn’t say it!” Badenoch said, having said it. “I didn’t say it!” she was delighted with the response. Hoyle, looking grumpy, consulted with a clerk. The Tory leader, grinning ear-to-ear, went on: “I haven’t said anything that’s not true, have I?”

Labour MPs were furious, but they can’t be too pious about this. In opposition the party put out adverts saying that Rishi Sunak didn’t think paedophiles should go to prison, which had some equally tenuous claim on truthfulness. However, the rest of us can take a view on whether this sort of thing makes Badenoch look like a prime minister-in-waiting, or simply someone who spends too much time on the madder bits of the internet. Perhaps she’s hoping that, if politics doesn’t work out, she can get a gig co-hosting The Liz Truss Show.

The immediate effect of her words was to unite Labour behind Starmer. In their last clash, the Tory leader successfully split the prime minister off from his party over his handling of Mandelson. She had an opportunity to do the same this time, as her questions about student loans took her to an area where many in Labour think the government is wrong — where indeed we may see policy change next week. But nothing brings people together like inflammatory insults from an opponent. As Badenoch carried on speaking, backbench Labour MPs started miming that their brains were exploding. When Starmer stood to describe her as “utterly irrelevant”, there was a huge cheer.

That was a fair reflection of his thinking. Although he has to take six questions from the Tory leader, the prime minister’s mind was clearly elsewhere. Nigel Farage was down to speak, and Labour’s Fleur Anderson asked a question about the Equality Act that set Starmer up to make the first of a series of attacks on Reform. He raised the party’s deputy council leader who had shared a death threat against Labour MP Natalie Fleet. “It said she should be shot,” the prime minister said. Farage nodded, giving the — probably incorrect — impression that he agreed with the idea. He needs to work on his facial expressions when he’s listening to criticism, but in fairness, he doesn’t get much practise at Reform events.

“If he has any decency or backbone,” Starmer went on, “he will stand up, apologise, condemn the comments, and sack the individual in his party.”

There was similar lined up for the other party that keeps the prime minister awake at night. The Greens, Starmer claimed, have “a policy of legalising cocaine, heroin, ketamine and the date-rape drug GHB”. Is this true? Carla Denyer was shaking her head, but the Greens are at the stage of insurgent politics where a lot of people have said a lot of things. Perhaps this will change under new leader Zack Polanski, who understands the danger of making huge boobs.

In his final answer, the prime minister managed to make a unifying attack on both parties, the Greens for wanting to pull out of NATO and Reform for “parroting Kremlin talking points”. Both of them, he said, “are weak on NATO and soft on Putin”.

You don’t have to be Harriet from The Traitors to know what this is about. Tomorrow, voters in the Gorton and Denton by-election go to the polls. If Labour loses, the next episode of Hoyle’s Law may be The Case of The Disappearing Prime Minister.