Serious, grown-up, boring politics is back

After a five-year period during which Boris Johnson demeaned himself and his entire parliamentary party with a series of call-and-response games (“How many new hospitals?” “40!”) and Rishi Sunak repeated his well-worn slogans like a knackered supermarket checkout machine, Prime Minister’s Questions was under new ownership (I think there was somebody in between Johnson and Sunak, but they slipped my mind).

That Keir Starmer would slip effortlessly into PMQs was surely never in doubt. Not a showman like Blair but not a presbyterian funeral director like Brown either, Starmer’s legal background lends itself to taking the temperature of proceedings down several notches, even if the prosecutor has now voluntarily turned defendant. You will hear “this government of service” an awful lot over the next five years. You will also inevitably get football banter every week, because Starmer is an absolute #lad.

Of course, it helps in being in absolute command of PMQs when you’ve just won an overwhelming majority and the opposition opposite have been reduced to an absolute shell about to rip each other to shreds over the space of four months.

Rishi Sunak is the first outgoing prime minister to take part in PMQs as leader of the opposition since John Major in 1997 (the aforementioned Brown disappeared immediately to have a bash at Edward Heath’s world sulking record). Watching it back now, Major looks like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders as he asked a now-arcane question about whether British Telecom would be liable for Blair’s planned windfall tax on the privatised utilities.

Sunak looked a bit like that today. Standing for the first time on the opposition benches, he wished Team GB well in the forthcoming Olympics. “I’ve no doubt after years of training, focus and dedication they’ll bring back many gold medals, although, to be honest, I’m probably not the first person they want to hear advice from on how to win,” he ruminated, to a loud “Aaaaawwwwwww” from across pretty much the entire House.

He’s a figure of pity already! He needs to lean into this – he’s one Strictly Come Dancing appearance (maybe give the next series a swerve, eh) away from landing his own BBC show where he “makes maths fun” alongside Sara Cox.

The exchange between the new prime minister and leader of the opposition was no fireworks display. Sunak played it straight, focusing all six questions on Ukraine and areas of agreement. Sunak asked if Starmer would continue the UK’s support, Starmer did, Starmer thanked Sunak for the briefings he’d received when the latter was in office and promised to continue with the protocol. It was serious fare.

Some on social media questioned why Sunak didn’t go on the attack more, when it would have been mad to go at the government on why they hadn’t solved all the ills of the world in two-and-a-half weeks, especially when those ills were largely of your own making.

The success of the Liberal Democrats and the collapse of the SNP means it is Ed Davey, not Stephen Flynn, who now gets two guaranteed questions a week. This allowed Starmer to make a joke about being surprised to see Davey wearing a suit as he was “more used to seeing him in a wetsuit”. Chortle! But Davey’s questioning – serious fare about the scandal over carer’s allowance payments – is an indicator of where he’s going to pitch his party in this parliament.

Elsewhere there were a few blasts from the past. The Tories, like all governments, liked to plant a few soft questions to their leader during PMQs, but, younger readers may not recall, New Labour were the absolute masters of it – and now they’re back. Hence the sight of Mark Hendrick, who has apparently been an MP for 24 years without anybody noticing, asking a question about the government’s planned Great British Energy plan so heavily scripted by the whips he didn’t even pretend not to be reading it. “This will be critical to ensure this country’s energy security while meeting our climate goals along energy bills,” [sic] he stuttered, having apparently not bothered to read it before.

Still, at least he wasn’t making as big a twit of himself as Dan Tomlinson, a new Labour MP with a 107-word Wikipedia entry, who asked if the prime minister agreed with him “on the importance of police stations”. (The former director of public prosecutions did, incidentally.)

And the Tories? Three spoke, two on planning reforms, of which you are going to be hearing much over the coming months. One, Roger Gale, began by referring to Lindsay Hoyle as “Mr Deputy Speaker” – never a wise move. “Another Freudian slip,” said Gale. “The old dog is off the leash.”

What did he mean? Who knows, but boring new broom or not, as long as there are old-school Tories who already sound like they’ve had a good lunch, there’ll be plenty for the sketchwriters to sink their teeth into.