QUENTIN LETTS: Kemi produced a monocle-popper over Starmer's lack of 'balls'. I think I saw one of the clerks flinch
Holy gonads. Kemi Badenoch produced a monocle-popper at PMQs when she said Sir Keir Starmer ‘doesn’t have the balls’ to be honest about trans rights.
Erskine May’s parliamentary rulebook offers no precise stricture against mentioning small spherical objects. Nor is there precedent, from slower days, of Arthur Balfour aiming such a barb at Henry Campbell-Bannerman, or of Hugh Gaitskell doubting Harold Macmillan’s manly capacities (despite Lady Dorothy’s doubts).
The House therefore did not quite know what to make of this pioneering moment.
I think I saw one of the clerks flinch and a Hansard reporter swallow the top of her ballpoint pen. Angela Rayner, who would normally laugh at a coarse riposte, did fantastically well to keep her face a mask of grim inexpression. She must be more ambitious than one suspected.
Big Ange was as pale as tripe. No Easter sunshine for her, plainly, unlike Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens, who wore a Katie Price tan.
Mrs Badenoch had not finished. The PM’s indecision – on the question of whether or not a woman could have a chap’s undercarriage – showed us his true character.
‘This is a question about moral courage,’ she felt, ‘about doing the right thing, even when it is difficult. The Prime Minister only tells people what they want to hear.
'He is a weathervane who twists in the wind. He doesn’t know what he actually believes.’
Kemi Badenoch poses the question of whether or not a woman could have a chap’s undercarriage
This was the first time Mrs Badenoch comprehensively flattened Sir Keir at PMQs. He didn’t like it one bit. The weathervane turned snippy, producing a jibe about Rishi Sunak.
He snapped that Mrs Badenoch was useless and claimed she was being undermined by Robert Jenrick, who in turn was ‘plotting’ with Nigel Farage. Mr Farage (Reform, Clacton) for once happened to be in his seat and gurgled with laughter.
At least I think it was Nigel. He, too, had been at the Ambre Solaire and was the colour of Mackeson's.
Mrs Badenoch’s best moment came when Sir Keir, pettish and pouty, accused her of inaction when she was in government (‘she’s a spectator, not a leader’). She boinged back to the despatch box and produced an impromptu, unrehearsed torrent of how she had long resisted the lunacies of trans orthodoxy.
She wondered if Sir Keir would now say sorry to Rosie Duffield (Independent, Canterbury), who left Labour in disgust over the trans wretchedness.
Ms Duffield was at the back of the chamber, bobbing. That meant she wanted to ask a question. Speaker Hoyle ignored her. Not his finest moment.
Sir Keir Starmer snapped that Mrs Badenoch was useless and claimed she was being undermined by Robert Jenrick
Nonetheless, we could probably guess, from the way Ms Duffield was shaking her head at Sir Keir’s blustering, what she thought of him.
‘I’ve always approached this on the basis that we should treat everyone with dignity and respect, whatever their views,’ honked Sir Keir. To lie like that while slagging off others and smearing yourself in buttery virtue: it’s quite an art.
Behind the prime minister sat Chris Ward and Melanie Ward, both Labour MPs yet apparently unrelated. The two Wards nodded vigorously, in perfect synchrony, their heads swinging like two... well, I’d better not say.
Parliamentary sycophancy was further evident when a little man from Airdrie and Shotts started his question with the words, ‘Can I commend the Prime Minister?’ How pitiful they are.
On Tuesday night, I happened to be chatting with a cabinet minister in a passageway when a gang of new Labour backbenchers passed us. They cooed greetings to the minister like so many new girls at St Trinian’s greeting one of the prefects.
It is also my duty to report that the Prime Minister, soon after noting the death of the Bishop of Rome, turned to a blind Lib Dem MP and wished ‘Jenny, his guide dog, a very happy birthday, I think for yesterday’. Why the Lib Dems don’t just sit on the Labour benches, it is hard to say.
Meanwhile, with government borrowing going nuts, the economy was in socialist high-tax nosedive. But that went almost unmentioned.
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