A guttural groan in an energy-free zone: sullen resignation haunts PMQs

It’s like watching dead men walking. Or, to be accurate, a dead man and a dead woman walking. Ghosts of Christmas parties past, haunting the dispatch box. Cast your mind forward to a year from now. It’s more than likely that prime minister’s questions will look very different. A change of cast. If not a change of fortune. Keir Starmer may not even make it much further than the end of May. The budget chaos and No 10’s curious briefings against itself have left many Labour MPs in despair. The government can’t even get the basics right these days. Cabinet ministers can barely be trusted to dress themselves. The May local elections could be the last straw. Only on Wednesday’s BBC Politics Live show, Clive Lewis was saying he would be happy to give up his seat to make way for Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster. Whether Andy would be happy to swap Manchester for Norwich is another matter, but you get the picture. Over on the government frontbench, Wes Streeting was looking even more pleased than usual as he gossiped with his old mucker from Treasury select committee days, Rachel Reeves. The wagons are circling. As for Kemi, what can one say? Her position as leader of the Tory party may be looking slightly more secure than it was a couple of months ago. But that’s not saying much. It’s just that she’s got a little less accident prone. Slightly less likely to self-destruct at a moment’s notice. But still on the wrong side of basic competence. Even when Starmer has a horror show, she can only occasionally come out ahead. A no-score draw ranks as an achievement. If she does survive the next year, it will be because none of her challengers reckon it’s worth making a move. Why show your hand when there’s no chance of glory? Let Kemi drive the Tories further on to the rocks. All of which explains why the Commons chamber was an energy-free zone for prime minister’s questions. MPs on both sides have long since whizzed through the five stages of grief. From denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many now find themselves in a hitherto unknown sixth stage. Sullen resignation. They have been ground down. The fight beaten out of them. They are here because they are here because they are here. Normally, PMQs is a time for backbenchers to make some noise. To behave like the antisocial adolescents so many of them are keen to put away. When politics is at its most tribal. But now it is as though there is a truce. No one dares to make much of a noise for fear of waking their neighbours. They are only in the Commons because the whips have bullied them into turning up. All they can manage is a collective guttural groan. A primitive Pavlovian response. A remembrance of things past. For Kemi, this was all a dry run for next week’s budget. A rehearsal of her best lines. Or her lines, at any rate. She’s going to have to come up with something a lot better than this if she hopes to make much of an impact. Why was his government the first to float tax rises and then cancel them after the budget, she began. Er … I know it feels like this budget thing has been going on for the last six weeks. And we know the Tories are not so secretly gutted that Reeves has decided not to go ahead with the 2p rise in income tax despite spending weeks telling everyone she would in code. But you would have thought she could have managed to get the date right. Starmer laughed in relief. He had been dreading this and it was now clear it wasn’t going to be as bad as expected. For her next five questions, Kemi went on and on about stealth taxes. How Reeves would be stealing our money by reneging on a promise not to freeze income tax thresholds. Yet again disappearing into her own space-time continuum. One where any number of realities were possible at the same time. When the Tories froze thresholds for seven years in 2021, raising £40bn in the process, despite a manifesto pledge not to do so, it was a sign of fiscal prudence. When Labour does the same it is the ultimate betrayal. As for the country? We just suck it up. We expect nothing different. “I have a golden rule,” Kemi went on. Cue sniggers from the few MPs still awake. Badenoch and her shadow chancellor are the only two people in the world to take her golden rule seriously. And even they aren’t entirely sure exactly what it is. Everyone else zones out. Information overload. With so much else going on, there’s no point finding out about something that was clearly a drug-induced psychosis and is never going to happen. If the bond markets really thought the Melster was going to be the next chancellor there would be a global panic. As it was, Starmer gave a series of non-denials. We all know thresholds will be frozen. He was no more convincing than Kemi and the final exchanges descended into a series of personal slanging matches. You’re more crap than me. No, you’re more crap than me. You were a useless Treasury minister and an even worse leader of the opposition. It was hardly edifying. Or reassuring. The session ended with Lee Anderson accusing Labour of dog-whistle politics with its new immigration policies. Weirdly, he seemed to think this was a bad thing. Given that Reform have turned dog-whistle politics into its specialist subject, you would have thought he would be cheering from the rooftops. Or maybe he’s just narked that Starmer is treading on his patch. Oi, Keir. Yes, you. Back off. Lee went on to boast about the success of the Reform-led councils. Again, you wondered whether he was aware that most of the councils were in chaos, had failed to find any significant savings – services have already been cut to the bone – and were planning on increasing council tax by the maximum 5%. Starmer just assumed Anderson was having a laugh and talked through Nigel Farage’s timelines. Last week Nige had been too busy to condemn Sarah Pochin for saying too many black faces drove her mad. Fair enough. Kemi has been too busy to condemn Robert Jenrick for saying there were too many black faces in Birmingham. There must be something in the Westminster water. Keir also wondered if Farage would like to apologise for the racist remarks he is alleged to have made while at school. It turned out he wouldn’t. Apparently, if you said something a long time ago it may not actually have happened. Words can literally die on the lips. There are two quantum realities. One in which things happened. Another in which they didn’t. And politicians are free to take their pick.