Fog of War: PMQs 26th March 2025

Plus comment on the Spring Statement

The PM ‘is not answering the question about discipline in schools… [and] did not answer the question about compensating schools for the jobs tax,’ said the Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch.

‘[Sir Keir] did not answer the point on the digital services tax,’ said the Lib Dems' leader Ed Davey, who wanted him to rule out scrapping it.

‘[Starmer’s] answer had nothing to do with my question,’ said Sir Julian Lewis (Con), ‘which was to ask why the Government are ordering the permanent sealing of Britain’s only two shale gas wells.’

The PM goes through the motions at question time, simply as a tedious obligation. Objections can be ignored; just put up a smokescreen. The grand strategy has been set and there is no turning back.

David Starkey calls Labour’s approach ‘magical thinking’, believing in the power of words until they collide with hard reality. The increases in the minimum wage and employment protection legislation plus the NIC hike were intended to improve the lot of working people, but they also incentivised employers to lay off staff and not take on more.

Like WWI generals, the Government has decided not to retreat and regroup, but go for ‘one more push.’ They will not repeal those previous measures but in the hope of making the books balance they will cut welfare benefits.

The sad consequences are predictable. When Labour’s Sojan Joseph asked how a blind constituent could get a job, the PM spoke of money invested in help programmes and ‘the right to try work guarantee.’ (Yes, ‘try.’) When the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, himself previously disabled, asked Starmer to explain to children of the disabled ‘how the Labour party making mum and dad poorer will lift them out of poverty’ he got sympathy and another attack on the Scottish government.

Bradley Thomas (Con) had another doomed go at modifying damaging Government policy. The NIC increase was going to cost Acorns hospice an extra £416,000. Would the PM exempt hospices from this burden? Starmer dodged into talk of additional funding for equipment etc and when greeted with Conservatives' cries and groans snapped that they ‘would have a lot more value if they started their questions with an apology for crashing the economy in the first place.’ So there.

Yes, rhetoric trumps logic, as it did in Sir Keir’s response to Sir Julian Lewis’s question on capping shale gas wells that might be needed in an energy emergency. The PM focused on the drive for renewable energy in the aspiration to ‘independence and the next generation of jobs and to lower bills,’ without considering the possibility of failure. He celebrated record investment in this so that ‘a tyrant like Putin cannot put his boot on our throat.’

Thank goodness for bogeymen: Starmer had opened the session by welcoming in the gallery a delegation from the Bring Kids Back (from Russia) initiative, founded by his khaki-sweatshirted pal Zelensky. The PM’s Scottish Labour friend Blair McDougall called the abductions ‘an act of pure evil’ and Starmer concurred - ‘sickening.’ Hate is the chilli in Labour’s cuisine; it masks duff ingredients.

Yet if only this government could succeed! The country has been let down for such a long time. The PM may prevaricate in these weekly verbal confrontations but it is also easy for him to counterattack the Conservative Opposition, whose previous incompetence and voter betrayal have led us to this pass.

Since there is little else that she can come at the PM with that does not invite the reply ‘your lot got us into this’ or ‘your lot did the same,’ Mrs Badenoch’s theme this time was education. She asked why had Labour voted against banning phones in schools, which disrupted lessons? It should have been relatively easy to do if, as the PM said, most schools did so already (but he was wrong, said Kemi). Denying the accusation that he was ‘ideological’ (!), Starmer ducked the shot and diverted attention to the need to control the content accessed by young people, in school or out.

Censorship is a can of worms. Ed Davey was keen on media regulation, too, citing the currently popular TV drama ‘Adolescence’ which portrays a white British teenager (it would have to be, one supposes) seduced by online material into committing murder. The narrative may additionally imply a false justification for further suppressing opinion, something now in progress with the new Online Safety Act that is already chilling political comment threads. Would the PM ‘guarantee that British laws on tax and social media will be written in this House, and not the White House?’ asked Davey, adding a little anti-American spice to today’s Russophobia. The PM welcomed the Lib Dem leader’s illiberal support, saying ‘We need to see whether we can go further on this issue, because there are concerns about whether the measures go far enough.’

But the House was waiting for the main event, Rachel Reeves’ post-PMQs supplementary ‘spring statement’ (aka Daffodil Budget?) that was coming less than five months after the first unadmitted disaster. She reaffirmed ‘our commitment to deliver just one major fiscal event a year’ after this one, for now it would put us back on course, as the Office for Budget Responsibility seemed to confirm in her welter of optimistic statistics.

We shall see. ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’ as the saying goes, and there are more contacts with reality to come. The spring offensive has yet to claim its full toll of casualties.

Crossposted with Wolves of Westminster