It was all set up for a crushing Labour triumph. A Starmer drama. The first prime minister’s questions since Boris Johnson had been left badly wounded after 148 of his own MPs had gone against him in a confidence vote. A time of extreme weakness when The Convict’s tenuous grip on his party could be brutally exposed. And you could sense the occasion had got to Johnson. Standing behind the Speaker’s chair before PMQs began, he looked unusually edgy, bouncing from foot to foot distractedly, as he ruffled the Toddler Haircut. A man desperate to be anywhere but here in the Commons chamber. There were cheers from his own side as he took his seat on the front bench, though they sounded forced and unconvincing. The Tory party isn’t that good at unity and is learning the hard way how difficult it is to fake it to make it. Louder cheers came from the opposition benches. They feel as if at last they have Johnson exactly where they want him. A lame duck leader, untrusted and unloved by a country which has got tired of the constant stream of lies and broken promises. A Janus-faced joker whose act has been seen through. Whose punishment is to keep failing ever better.
Labour’s Angela Eagle teed things up nicely for her leader. We now knew just how loathed The Convict was. And that was just within his own party. If 148 of his own MPs no longer trusted him, why should anyone else? Johnson forced open his bloodshot eyes and blustered. He had had a long political career, he said, before correcting himself. Just in case anyone might think that meant he was washed up. “In fact, I’ve barely begun.” Several of his own MPs gulped at that. The only way many of them can tolerate Johnson remaining in office is by holding the thought that his tenure is strictly time-limited – that, sometime before the next election, he will automatically self-destruct. Except Johnson really believes it. He imagines himself to be one of the immortals. The ultimate political shapeshifter. The exceptionalist. His current spell in Number 10 may come to an end in the next year or so, but there’s nothing to stop him from reinventing himself. So you didn’t like his first incarnation as prime minister? No bother. He can easily give you a different one. He will be whatever you want him to be. There is no principle or person to which he holds any attachment. As with all true narcissists, his only loyalty is to himself. The Convict went on. The only reason he had so many political enemies was because he had achieved so much. In fact, he wouldn’t rest until his entire party turned against him because that would mean he had been staggeringly successful. This was truly delusional stuff. The sort of thinking that gets ordinary people sectioned for their own benefit. Truly we are blessed to have a leader so disconnected from the real world. He is hated because he has done so little, not because he has done so much. In nearly three years, he has achieved almost nothing. Other than to go to some parties. And lie about them. Here was the prime minister unplugged. A deconstructed shambles. Just mouthing any old nonsense that came to mind. Sentences started yet never completed. The hubris of a man who believes himself to be one of the finest minds of his generation exposed as a halfwit. All that Keir Starmer needed to do was to step in and deliver the coup de grace. To laugh at the Tory benches for the cross they had made for themselves. They had now bound themselves to Johnson – mainly because the gene pool of talent was so desiccated that no one had the IQ to imagine another leader – and were doomed to be dragged down with him. The Convict was their problem. Theirs alone. And yet somehow – even when presented with the most open of goals – Starmer still contrived to miss. He looked and sounded distracted. Pauses longer than an old thesp in rep. Almost as if his mind was elsewhere. It made one wonder if he hadn’t just heard unwelcome news from Durham police. It would be the ultimate irony if the fallout from Partygate was that Starmer lost his job. Though you sense some Labour MPs might not be wholly dismayed. They long for a leader with a bit of edge. Who can sprinkle the donkey work with stardust.
Starmer made a few references to The Convict’s diminished state before moving on to the NHS. Here he was on stronger ground, though his questioning was still somewhat lacklustre. Almost as if he wanted to make sure that Johnson wasn’t damaged too badly. That he was more valuable to Labour while still in office. If so, Starmer is more savvy than he looks. Where are the 48 hospitals Johnson had promised? You’d be lucky to find a single A&E department that had been given a paint job. People were dying waiting for cancer treatment. Where were the doctors? And what about the Netflix NHS? Did this mean Transplant TV with open heart surgery as pay per view? Or Deathwatch – Sajid Javid’s answer to Springwatch – in which you could gamble on the first person to die in a geriatric ward? Then there was the admission from Nadine Dorries that the health service had been totally unprepared for the pandemic. The culture secretary became very excitable when her name was mentioned and tried first to shout that she had never written the tweet trashing Jeremy Hunt, and then that maybe she had but she hadn’t meant it to be taken that seriously, as all she really wanted was to let Boris know how much she loved him. “Everything I do, I do it for you.” Johnson was quiet when Starmer told of a man whose mother had died waiting for an ambulance, but he really wasn’t that bothered. What did someone else’s death have to do with him? Instead he started wittering on about how well the economy was doing. That would be the economy that the OECD had down as the second slowest in the G20. Second only to Russia. Top news all round. The longer PMQs went on, the more upbeat The Convict became. As if he was aware he had dodged a bullet and was determined to enjoy what moments he had left. He must have been like this at the Oxford Union. Arrogant, out of touch, insufferable. He waved his hands dismissively at questions he didn’t like and just made promises he was never going to keep to his own backbenchers. Meanwhile, Johnson just plods on. Lost to the world. Lost to his party. Lost to himself. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.