PMQs Review: Things can only get worse

Things, as D:Ream didn’t quite sing, can only get worse. Yes, prices have increased over the past 12 months by 4% on average, NHS waiting lists have almost tripled in size over the last decade, rivers are overflowing with effluent and the government’s new childcare scheme has already collapsed like a clown’s car, but everything is, in fact, getting better. Rishi Sunak told us so today.

It came as Keir Starmer asked when the PM would realise that “the biggest practical problem facing Britain is the constant farcical incompetence of the government that he leads”.

“He talked about the cost of living, Mr Speaker, he talked about the economy, but he never actually brings it up and we all know why, Mr Speaker – because things are improving and we are making progress!,” he yelled. Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves couldn’t have laughed more had a dog in sunglasses entered the chamber.

“Wages now rising, Mr Speaker, debt on track to be reduced [fact check – it isn’t] and inflation more than halved from 11-and-a-half to four per cent! Because he actually knows that our plan is working and that his £28 billion tax grab will take Britain back to square one!,” Sunak went on.

Even his own colleagues weren’t impressed. To his immediate left, Victoria Atkins stared ahead motionlessly, like one of those out-of-work actors in Covent Garden. Further to his right, Penny Mordaunt looked like she was willing that sword from the Coronation to suddenly reappear and fall on her. Perhaps they were reflecting on the fact that Sunak’s new favourite phrase, “back to square one”, isn’t ideal when all polls suggest that would be a welcome destination for a sizeable chunk of the population.

It was a miserable performance by Sunak on a day which began with his former deputy at the Treasury, Simon Clarke, calling for him to be replaced with another unelected prime minister. Starmer began by summing up what had been “quite a week” for the prime minister: scrapping with his own MPs, laughing when a member of the public asked him about NHS waiting lists, managing to “accidentally record a candid video for Nigel Farage”. Was the PM surprised, he asked “seeing one of his own MPs say he doesn’t get what Britain needs and he’s not listening to what people want”?

It was at this point that something strange happened and Sunak regenerated before us into a TalkTV shock-jock. “He talks about what Britain needs, what Britain wants values – this from a man who takes the knee! [In 2020]. Who wanted to abolish the Monarchy! [As a teenager]. Who still doesn’t know what a woman is!” [“A woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up,” Starmer said last year].

And he brushed off Clarke’s comments, pointing out that last October Steve Coogan made some disobliging remarks about Starmer in an interview. He was forgetting, perhaps, that one of these men until relatively recently served in government alongside Sunak, while the other is Alan Partridge. God, it’s going to be a long general election.

Away from the main action, there was an intervention from Conservative Kinder, Küche, Kirche crackpot Miriam Cates. Cates, to be fair, was raising a serious issue – social media bullying among children. But her solution was, ahem, unconventional: would the PM look at banning under-16s from owning a smartphone or using social media?

The PM demurred. Even he must know that “vote Tory and we’ll take your kid’s phone off them” is not the policy to win back the Red Wall. Although, to be fair, the country’s going to pot, and at least they won’t be able to find out.