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WHAT, on Earth, was that?
I had tuned in to watch Keir Starmer’s final Prime Minister’s Questions – but was greeted by a gang of excited teenagers running down the clock before they all get boozy and watch the England game.
The similarities to the final class of the school year were obvious from the outset. The fact that Starmer at one point actually bragged about getting told off by a teacher took it beyond all parody.
“I got into a lot of trouble in a primary school when an eight-year-old encouraged me to do the 6-7 thing and the whole class joined in. It went viral and when I left, the headteacher told me sternly that it was against the school rules.”
That is a genuine quote from Starmer at his final ever Prime Minister’s Questions. Edifying, it was not.
And others were just as bad.
LibDem leader Ed Davey used his time to ask some bizarre Toy Story-themed question which crowbarred in jokes about Buzz Lightyear and Andy. It would have landed better if he didn’t pronounce the movie like a man who’s only ever seen the words “Toy Story” together on a briefing note.
In response to the laboured joke – and again this sounds like parody but is not – Starmer invited Davey to join him on a visit to Chessington World of Adventures during Andy Burnham’s first PMQs in September.
The LibDem leader found that literally hilarious, falling about himself laughing.
Between all the giggles and winks, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch tried her hardest to imitate gravitas, and Starmer did his own faux-seriousness in response. No one who watched the chummy exchanges will have been fooled.
There were also various jokes about Nigel Farage facing Count Binface in the Clacton by-election, and too many football or World Cup references to count.
Richard Tice, now Reform’s most senior MP, asked the outgoing Prime Minister to “commit in his remaining days in office to carrying out whatever meetings, reviews, motivational talks to ensure his greatest legacy on Sunday is that finally football is coming home”.
That was, to put it mildly, nonsensical.
But at its heart, this was a PMQs that put on show the reality of Westminster.
The MPs in the chamber may pretend to disagree on this or that from time to time, but ultimately they are all aligned where it counts. Economic growth is priority number one. Tax rises for the wealthy are unthinkable. Immigration must come down. Lifeline support payments to society’s vulnerable are first on the chopping block. The list goes on.
Ultimately, Starmer’s final Prime Minister’s Questions should have been a chance to pick apart the dire record which has seen him forced from office just two years after winning a landslide.
But there is another thing MPs all agree on: They wouldn’t want that for their final PMQs either. Instead, they’d all much prefer to act like it’s the end of a jolly school term.
However, people across the UK whose energy bills went up just two weeks ago, whose paycheques are being devalued by inflation which is still double the pre-pandemic rate, or who are among the 11 million out of work altogether, will struggle to understand what is all so funny.
