As election rumours swirl, a moment of calm is shattered

At the heart of a Westminster abuzz with election talk, today’s Prime Minister’s Questions saw Parliament at its best.

MPs from all sides united to pay tribute to Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP returning to Westminster for the first time since having both hands and feet amputated following a life-threatening episode of sepsis. Tearful speaker Lindsay Hoyle allowed applause – ordinarily a parliamentary no-no – and Mackinlay made a genuinely moving and funny speech.

After that damning report into the tainted blood scandal, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer ground deep into the detail of what needs to happen in future. Neither sought to make party-political capital, both agreed on the importance of candour (although Starmer pronounces it Can-DOR, like something from Game of Thrones). It was an example of grown-up governance.

And then Danny Kruger rose to speak.

Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes, is a leading member of the National Conservatives, the grouping for those who believe Victorian values to be a little on the lax side. And he had not got the memo about today’s decorum.

“In 1997 the public voted in what they were told would be a sort of continuity Conservative government – the same policies, just with different faces,” he said, citing something which literally nobody was saying in 1997 (his own party, readers may recall, claimed Tony Blair was the actual Devil).

“Instead what they got was record immigration, constitutional vandalism and a broken economy. Does the prime minister agree that with the economy now ROARING BACK TO LIFE under a Conservative government the last thing we need is a return to a failed Labour recipe of HIGH TAXES, OPEN BORDER and EMPLOYMENT LAWS THAT DESTROY JOBS?”.

Even Sunak looked faintly embarrassed by it. “My honourable friend gives a superb and passionate economic diagnosis and he’s right,” he said. In Parliament, “passionate” is often a synonym for “crackers”.

In a chamber where the amount of election speculation meant an even higher proportion of MPs than usual were looking at their phones, it fell to SNP leader Stephen Flynn to put the only question most were thinking about to the prime minister.

“Does the prime minister intend to call a summer general election or is he feart?, he asked.

“As I have said repeatedly to him, there is – spoiler alert – going to be a general election in the second half of this year,” responded Sunak.

That second half of the year begins on July 1. If the prime minister does announce that summer election, expect a lot less of today’s mature conduct and a lot more of the Danny Kruger-style RANDOM SHOUTING.