HENRY DEEDES: Boris and Keir were like a pair of scorpions engaging in and energetic waltz
Boing! It looked as though Keir Starmer’s eyes had been stabbed with a couple of cocktail sticks: HENRY DEEDES watches the Prime Minister and the Labour leader jousting like scorpions
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When scorpions begin their courtship, they enter into an energetic waltz, as violent as it is passionate. At first, a fair amount of affectionate pushing and grappling takes place.
But as these ruthless arachnids’ pincers and venomous stingers flail flirtatiously, skirmishes soon emerge from which both sides will inevitably feel a nasty bite.
Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer are currently embroiled in a similarly complex pas de deux over the smouldering crisis in the Ukraine.
Boris Johnson, pictured, and Keir Starmer used their carefully phrased messages of support to stage mutual respect, yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions
However, Sir Keir, pictured, soon claimed the PM’s measures against Vladimir Putin’s people were not sufficient
Each of their exchanges are dressed up with carefully phrased messages of support and mutual engagement. For all their personal animosity, there is an attempted display – however staged – of respect.
Between those warm words, however, there is nearly always a sting in the tail.
At yesterday’s PMQs, Starmer resorted to the same gambit he used during the pandemic.
More from Henry Deedes for the Daily Mail…
He wanted to appear to back the Government’s firm stance against President Putin while at the same time arguing the measures being introduced were innately drippy. Mr Johnson too was playing something of a double game. His response to most of Starmer’s questions was to offer elaborate thanks for his support.
Yet he made it clear he trusted him about as much as he trusts his staff with the keys to the Downing Street drinks cabinet.
Sir Keir wanted tougher sanctions against Russia’s mega-rich elite. ‘If not now, when?’, he demanded. Presumably, if the great prosecutor was in charge he’d be dragging Mayfair’s oligarchs from their penthouses, bound and gagged in their silken Louis Vuitton scarves.
‘There is more to come,’ insisted Boris. ‘Get on with it!’ came the cry from Labour MPs, flexing their muscles over-enthusiastically toward the Urals. Years of enduring Jeremy Corbyn’s embarrassing kowtowing to Moscow must do this to you.
Boris argued that we needed to squeeze Putin simultaneously with our allies. The UK couldn’t go racing off the lone cowboy playing the tough guy.
‘I hear what the Prime Minister says,’ Starmer replied sympathetically before doubling down on his demands for more action.
Guffaws erupted from the government benches at this political posturing. Deputy chief whip Chris Pincher barked something from the rear of the chamber.
I couldn’t hear what but we can safely assume he wasn’t complimenting Sir Keir on his tailoring. Speaker Hoyle hopped from his chair and told him to shaddup.
Starmer repeated his request that Kremlin propaganda channel RT be shut down.
Boris insisted that yanking the plug on TV channels was for regulator Ofcom, not politicians. ‘That’s what Russia does,’ he pointed out. Quite so.
Does anyone here even watch RT? I’d wager there are bigger audiences watching the screens in the windows of the Oxford Street Currys on a weekday lunchtime. The atmosphere in the chamber was tepid. As it probably should have been when discussing the fate of a peaceful country at the hands of a vile despot.
Vladimir Putin, pictured, was the main subject at PMQs yesterday and his planned invasion of Ukraine
Things warmed up briefly when Starmer began making mischief over the ‘flood of foreign money’ flowing into politics – i.e. from the deep pockets of Russian-linked millionaires into Tory coffers.
Here Boris lurched himself forward like he was making a dash for the try-line. He’d been itching for a bit of argy-bargy.
Before Starmer started ‘chucking it around’ he said, he wished to remind the House one of his own MPs, Brent North’s beardy-weirdy Barry Gardiner, received more than £500,000 from the Chinese communist party. Roars from the government benches.
Boing! For a moment it looked as though Sir Keir’s eyes had been stabbed with a couple of cocktail sticks. Blasted Barry! He’s one of Corbyn’s lot. No friend of Starmer.
Labour’s leader hopped to his feet, waved his right paw and shook his head at this most unsatisfactory line of attack. Having been the first to dole it out, he now tried to play the statesman.
‘No, Mr Speaker, at this moment we have to stand united, and I am not going to be deflected from that,’ he sighed.
Oh give over. Just as mating scorpions are also prone, he and the PM remain desperate to sting one another to death.
