Once more unto the speeches

Is there anything more incongruous than the sound of people cheering after a Keir Starmer speech? As the prime minister announced that Britain’s teens are going to be banned from accessing Andrew Tate videos and TikTok shorts about eyeliner, there was wild applause. Someone actually whooped. It’s been a long time since anyone welcomed anything Starmer said on any subject, the poor chap.

There was a strange unreality to Monday morning in Westminster

In an attempt to pre-empt questions about why he’d reversed his position on this issue, he offered a familiar defence. “Some people are dismissive of processes like this,” Starmer said, a touch sadly. “That is not how this government carries out its business.” The prime minister would never dismiss a process. He loves processes. Processes, he often tells us, are always followed, whether it’s to do with the appointment of dodgy US ambassadors or the accepting of gifts from donors. Although, given the terrible outcomes we see from these processes, it’s hard to understand his faith in them.

There was a strange unreality to Monday morning in Westminster, where we had multiple speeches from top politicians, and one from Kemi Badenoch, too. Across town Robert Jenrick, who would like you to know that he’s available if Nigel Farage is unable to return from his current period in hiding, was promising to be mean to foreigners. We’ll come back to that. 

Starting with the actual government, the prime minister was talking about the social media ban four days after his defence secretary resigned, accusing him of leaving the nation at risk. Starmer made no reference to this. It was like a friend asking for your advice about gardening the week after his wife walked out and took the kids. The ban is supposed to be in force from next spring, but who now seriously believes the prime minister will still be in place even in the autumn?

John Healey’s departure had presented Badenoch with something more than an open goal. The opposition had already kicked the ball into their own net, and all that was left for her was to give it a celebratory boot into the crowd. Her speech was a good one, but in the circumstances, it would have been very hard for it not to be. All she had to do was read out Healey’s letter. The best part was a summary of the tastier bits of the Sunday papers.

The rest was more questionable. As ever, there was a demand that the welfare bill be cut, with no acknowledgement that her own shadow chancellor had been minding the shop when it ballooned. Badenoch says the Tories are up for hard choices, but they’re not even willing to take Winter Fuel Payments off rich pensioners. (This becomes more understandable when you look at the crowd for Badenoch speeches.)

More notable was what she didn’t say. Usually when the leader of the opposition announces that the prime minister has to go, they call for an immediate general election. With Reform rampant, Tory MPs may be the only people who view that idea with even more horror than the Labour benches. Instead, she effectively urged Starmer to stand aside in favour of Andy Burnham. There was an offer of Tory votes to help deliver welfare changes, but though she tried to make 116 MPs sound like a lot, it really isn’t. The circumstances in which enough Labour MPs rebelled that the Conservative could help are circumstances no Labour leader could survive.

In the end Badenoch, Starmer and the rest of us are all bystanders, waiting for Makerfield, and the coming — or not — of Burnham.

And now…

NIGEL FARAGE — AN APOLOGY. Last week, I noted that since The Guardian revealed that he’d accepted a £5 million “gift” from a crypto-billionaire, the leader of Reform has carefully avoided places where people might ask him questions. In response, I find I’m now being shunned by Reform: when shame-vacuum finance spokesman Jenrick spoke on Monday morning, I was the only sketchwriter not invited. 

To some journalists, the discovery that they were no longer going to have to attend events with Richard Tice would be a source of profound relief. Such hacks might take it as a compliment to have so riled the not-at-all fragile people who run Reform that they enacted petty revenge. But I am not that kind of writer. Goodness no. 

So I would like to take this opportunity to say that I apologise for ever implying that Farage might be scared of questions. Quite the opposite: the leader of Reform is a giant among pygmies, a vigorously healthy man of tremendous moral and physical courage who has only gone into hiding because he doesn’t want reporters to embarrass themselves by asking him if there’s anything he wouldn’t do for money. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any human in history more deserving of mysterious sums arriving in their bank account, and it is an indictment on our broken society that anyone dares to question how they got there.

More than that, I urge readers to plunder their own savings at once and put the cash in one of the many Nigel-backed ventures to be found online, from bullion to crypto to cheap nappies. Or just buy him a house. There is no more deserving cause to be found. 

I hope that gets me back on the list.