Two cheers for Keir

Nothing seems to become prime ministers like the way they leave the job. Margaret Thatcher’s final Prime Minister’s Questions saw her delighting in a final moment of combat. Tony Blair’s featured political insight and a nice turn of phrase. Boris Johnson’s was full of bitterness that his MPs had rejected his brilliance. And Keir Starmer’s? Much like the man himself, it was long-winded but good-natured, dignified but self-satisfied.

He was greeted by such a roar of approval that you might have thought Labour MPs liked him. Let’s just say they have all felt more warmly since he announced he was off. The event had the air of a retirement party where people have realised there’s no longer any need to complain about the way he keeps putting the wrong paper in the photocopier. 

Even Kemi Badenoch was generous, something that doesn’t come naturally. “I wanted to make sure I got the tone right today,” she opened, in what I’m choosing to take as a knowing acknowledgement that this isn’t her strong suit. She opened by praising the prime minister’s support for Volodymyr Zelensky after he was berated in the White House last year. 

For his part, the prime minister, slightly desperately trying to secure his legacy, had decided to treat the session as a sort of Show and Tell event. He’d brought along a series of people he’d helped to sit in the gallery and whatever the Tory leader asked him about, he answered by telling each of their stories in turn. If Winston Churchill planned to ensure history was kind to him by writing it himself, Starmer was making sure that his good deeds all got into Hansard. 

This required him to ignore Badenoch’s questions even more blatantly than he usually does. “As Prime Minister, I have participated in over 60 sessions of PMQs,” he said. “I have answered — or at least given answers —” that got a big laugh “2,800 times.”

The Tory leader, in fairness, achieved her goal tonally: generous to an outgoing opponent, aiming her fire elsewhere. “One politician intends to spend the summer avoiding scrutiny, refusing to set out his plans,” she said. “Does the prime minister not agree that what the country deserves is a televised debate between Nigel Farage and Count Binface?” Richard Tice laughed loudly at that one, while Robert Jenrick put on the face he uses when he wants to show that he too has a sense of humour.

Not that there is anything funny about Nigel Farage’s by-election in Clacton, as Danny Kruger, who defected to Reform last year, solemnly assured us. “Politics is not a joke,” he said, to laughter, complaining that no one else was playing along with his leader’s hissy fit. If you’re demanding people take you seriously, as Ronald Reagan didn’t quite say, you’re losing. 

The party leaders all opened their statements with tributes to Ann Widdecombe. Starmer proposed putting a crest up for her in the chamber, an honour previously reserved for serving MPs who were killed. Even though Widdecombe had gone to Reform, Badenoch said, “she always remained part of the Conservative family”. It was a revealing remark about the Tory leader’s attitudes: it’s hard to imagine her saying the same thing about Gavin Barwell or David Gauke if they dropped dead tomorrow, and neither of them has joined a party dedicated to wiping hers out.  

But the session was also a reminder of many of the reasons that the prime minister will spend the weekend packing. Starmer had liked Rachel Reeves’s joke about Farage spending the summer “arguing with a bin” that he repeated it not once but twice. It may sound trivial, but politics is partly performance, and that’s not the mistake that a skilled performer would make. Likewise, there were quite a lot of jokes about football, which served to illustrate again that even on this subject about which he cares passionately, the prime minister is unable to sound authentic. 

He managed it at the end, talking about his family. His wife Victoria and their son and daughter were sat in a corner, watching his final appearance. 

“Every prime minister,” Starmer said, “knows when they take up the torch that the day will come when they have to pass it on.” Well, it’s not quite clear that Boris ever accepted that. “That day has come for me. This is the end of my political journey. In six years, we went from historic defeat in 2019 to historic victory in 2024, and after two years in government, I leave the country in better shape than I found it in.” Does he? 

He thanked the civil service and the Commons staff, and offered his good wishes to MPs of all parties. “To my wife and children, I love you. Goodbye.” It won’t make it into any dictionaries of quotations, but at least it was heartfelt. Labour’s Carolyn Harris, who had asked the last question, was crying, as, on the front bench next to the prime minister, were Liz Kendall and Rachel Reeves. Across the chamber, Victoria wiped her eyes. Labour MPs rose and applauded the prime minister, and the Lib Dems quickly joined in. Even Reform stood, with Kruger actually clapping. 

Only the Tories stayed seated. Badenoch clearly felt she’d delivered enough goodwill for one day. That, too, was quite becoming, and also wise: she wouldn’t want to pull a muscle.