Yes or no? PMQs 21st May 2025

Overture

Seemingly, the PM aims to make PMQs into a tired, pointless country dance. It’s all about managing appearances, which is easy when almost everything is scripted and minor characters are never allowed supplementary questions to smash through his meringue answers.

Even with the greater latitude afforded to the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch rarely scores, either. Last week she did, claiming that unemployment had risen ten per cent since Starmer took over. This galvanised the Government into a response and, since Sir Keir was not sufficiently on top of his brief to shoot her down straight away, it was left to Jake Richards (Lab, Rother Valley) to raise it straight after the session as a Point Of Order. Here is his POO, delivered with something of our Leader’s boorish snarl:

“That figure is completely and utterly incorrect. It is no wonder that George Osborne, the former Conservative Chancellor, has said that she has no economic plan if she cannot even get basic statistics right. Will the Leader of the Opposition return to the House and correct the record?”

The Speaker set him down gently: “You have corrected the record in your opinion. We will leave it there for now.”

Act One

This week, the PM began with a couple of sad items – is being a ‘mood hoover’ his technique to dull blades before they clash? – and went on to boast of his ‘deals’. One of these last was with the EU and included an astounding giveaway, extending for another twelve years the Union’s fishing rights under the Brexit withdrawal agreement that were due to expire in June 2026.

When Edward Heath allowed Continental ships the liberty to fish right up to our shoreline as part of our 1973 entry into the EEC, it was because of blithering incompetence, and so his government blew PR smoke all over it.

This PM has no such excuse, if that’s the word we seek. The despair so many of us feel is because we cannot always tell whether the Starmer Government knows what it is doing or not, and which is worse. In this case, it is the former.

Does the PM actually ‘have it in’ for fishermen and farmers? If so, would that be because those food producers are not ‘working people’ as defined by Sir Keir? They work longer than most and often earn less, but they are not wage slaves – is that the problem?

Starmer’s other ‘deals’ were with the US and India, and they too hardly bear critical examination. If you sent the PM out to get fish and chips, what on earth might he come back with?

As for his vaunted “fastest economic growth in the G7”, if we take in the world and his wife, GDP will go through the roof, and at the same time we will be bust.

The first question was from Lewis Cocking (Con), who asked when Starmer would “stop all illegal immigration”. This received the customary bureaucratic boilerplate: past Tory failures / government introducing legislation / Opposition voting against (skipping over the valid reasons). It was a very weak attack anyway – illegal immigration is only a fraction of the overall influx, and if the ‘youth worker visa’ system takes off, the traffickers may find a way to document their customers appropriately.

Next was Labour’s Sarah Owen, highlighting the plight of pensioners forced by inflation to use up their savings. Yet even the mightiest oak will bend in a strong wind, and the PM said: “We want to ensure that more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments as we go forward.” Everything depended on the economic improvements he foresaw.

Then came the main feature: a spat between Starmer and Badenoch on inflation, the causes of which are complex, not least ‘events, dear boy’. Kemi bore the usual tirade with equanimity but though she has the hide of a rhinoceros, she lacks its horn. She failed to puncture Starmer with her demand for a yes-or-no on whether he was planning a U-turn on the Winter Fuel Allowance; but then, he had just given his more nuanced response to Sarah Owen.

Interval

During these exchanges, the Speaker had to intervene to chide the Government benches for their noisy mockery, both Whips and “Boyzone at the back”. Such is the arrogant self-confidence of overwhelming power. A propos, post-PMQs, in a Point Of Order raised by Kirsty Blackman (SNP), Speaker Hoyle had to deliver a rocket to DWP and Treasury officials who were failing to respond in a timely fashion to her constituent.

Wera Hobhouse (Lib Dem) told of China’s refusal to admit her into Hong Kong, because of her stance on human rights as she suspected. The PM deplored banning people “for simply expressing their views”. He also assured John McDonnell (Ind) that he would continue to press the Egyptian Government for the release of long-imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

However, Sir Keir’s sympathies were more limited towards Lucy Connolly, who is part way through a 31-month sentence for an intemperate tweet that she had deleted within a few hours. He told Rupert Lowe (Ind) that he celebrated the independence of British courts and was “strongly in favour” of free speech (a tradition of which he boasted to US President Trump) but was “against incitement to violence”. Some might say the jury is out in that case, in the ‘court of public opinion’.

Act Two

After ‘PM v LOTO’, Louise Jones (Labour) soothed Starmer’s unruffled feathers with a gift question on breakfast clubs and other measures to give children a better start in life.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey asked yet again, somewhat pointlessly, about the Winter Fuel Allowance, but more penetratingly about changes to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The constituent’s case Davey quoted meant potentially an income cut of £12,000 a year. To the latter, Sir Keir gave his off-the-peg generalised response about necessary support, plus help to get work. Later, Labour’s Andy MacNae raised the same issue, specifically in relation to stressful multiple PIP reassessments; again, the PM spoke of the need to reform the system.

Jim Allister (TUV, North Antrim) highlighted another unresolved problem – that of Northern Ireland and its post-Brexit trading status with the EU, whereby British Steel could sell to the US free of tariffs, but not to NI. The PM acknowledged that it was a work in progress.

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) reiterated the issue of family farm IHT. To skeptical noises, Starmer asserted the “very limited impact of the inheritance tax, only on farmers at a very high level”.

Dr Neil Hudson (Con) tried a portmanteau question on winter fuel payments, pensioner poverty, the “jobs tax”, family farm IHT and fishing rights. This was a mistake, as Sir Keir often gives vague answers even to focused queries; his reply was about our high growth (unanalysed) and trade deals (ditto).

Similarly, Lee Anderson (Reform) wanted to know exactly how many of Starmer’s 24,000 deportees were illegals who arrived by boat or were smuggled in by lorries. Sir Keir’s response to the “simple question” was to boast of the numbers and to criticise the Opposition for not supporting his Immigration Bill (again, without saying what their reasons may have been).

It might have been better to send this for a written reply and then castigate officials if they failed to be specific. All it did this time was give the PM the opportunity to note Nigel Farage’s absence from the Chamber.

A deadlier yes-or-no question might have been the one that ex-MP George Galloway suggests (see from 2:00 on), as to whether Starmer has ever met any of the three young men accused of setting fire to his current and former properties; but nobody would have the nerve. Besides, rumour has it that the whole affair has been overblown; by whom, and why, is not clear.

On an ostensibly unrelated matter, Winston Churchill is said to have been the last red-headed Prime Minister (though grey when in office).

From Wolves of Westminster