QUENTIN LETTS: Kemi won a laugh at the PM's expense, popping his priggish pomposity
With his gift for stale phraseology he complained that Kemi Badenoch 'comes here every week and just talks the country down'.
Mrs Badenoch: 'I'm not talking the country down. I'm talking him down.' That won a laugh. Kemi has plenty of problems of her own but at least she pops the old booby's priggish pomposity.
With summer recess imminent, this was the last PMQs until September. It has not been the easiest of first years. Sir Keir, however, was insistent that 'we're fixing the country'. How did he define the 'working people' who will allegedly be protected from tax rises? Sir Keir: 'The sort of people who work hard but haven't necessarily got the savings to buy themselves out of problems.'
If you have savings, you might want to withdraw them from the bank and stick them under the tea cosy. Do so before the autumn Budget.
Noise levels on the Labour benches were reasonably high but the volume was coming from a few lusty Starmerites. Gateshead's Mark Ferguson had his mouth constantly ajar, lips funnelled like an operatic baritone. He's a burly lad, Ferguson. Could do a lot of damage to one of those Chinese all-you-can-eat buffets.
A row or two behind him sat two leaner, more delicate cats: former Labour Party lawyer Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff W), who is prone to twitches, and Emily Darlington (Lab, Milton Keynes C). Both wore rapt smiles as the PM churned through his scripted, recycled zingers.
Further along the row we had Matt Turmaine (Lab, Watford), beaming moonily. Not an automatic choice for University Challenge, perhaps. Closer to the chamber's back doors sat two more glinting intellectuals, Perran Moon (Lab, Camborne & Redruth) and Sean Woodcock (Lab, Banbury). How they cackled at Sir Keir's stodgy repartee. Mr Woodcock actually lifted one buttock off the bench, so electrified was he by our prosaic helmsman.
Other parts of the Labour benches were less gaseous. This became particularly evident when Sir Desmond Swayne (Con, New Forest W) rasped a precise question about the Hermer-Benn proposal which threatens to leave Northern Ireland veterans liable to prosecution while bringing a compensation windfall to Gerry Adams. The silence from the Government benches was evidence that Lord Hermer commands little esteem among his Commons comrades.
Cabinet members on the front bench did not exactly gleam with enthusiasm. Angela Rayner was a lank, motionless figure. Rachel Reeves forgot to maintain her rictus grin. Call for the Kleenex Mansize! Yvette Cooper and Steve Reed were two carsick spaniels.
Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley & Holderness) made a forced joke about the Labour manifesto, calling it 'beautifully written, deeply moving and, like that other great blockbuster, Salt Path, a total pack of lies'. Liz Kendall, Work and Pensions Secretary,
cast a sad gaze to the floor. Home Secretary Ms Cooper's ringed eyes bored into the middle-distance.
Lincoln Jopp (Con, Spelthorne) had a larky question about England's Test match win. It meant nothing to Sir Keir. Cricket quite foreign to him.
Behind the Speaker's chair there was no sign of Defence minister Al Carns, who normally stands there. His place was taken by two slender greasers, Jake Richards (Lab, Rother Valley) and Jack Abbott (Lab, Ipswich), adopting shrewd frowns and macho stances. Treasury minister Torsten Bell toddled up to them, blushing. They resisted the urge to gush back at little Torsten.
And at the other end of the joint that strange creature Paul Kohler (Lib Dem, Wimbledon) removed his jacket to betray braces, silver shirt-sleeve garters and a set of keys prominent on his trouser belt.
Mr Kohler dropped low his head. I thought he was bowing to the Speaker. But then he threw his skull backwards. He was just rearranging his floppy fringe.
Vain, self-absorbed, detached. That's Westminster.
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5 areas within commuting distance of London with prices under £400,000
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She was ordered to undergo an online two hour e-training module which was apparently a two-hour antisemitism awareness course. Her comments concerning the Irish and Traveller communities were not addressed. I suspect Abbott had been rather keen to clarify the comments in the Naughtie interview and didn't anticipate this reaction from Labour HQ. She has posted the excerpt from the interview that is causing all of the controversy to her X account in which she can be heard saying: 'Clearly there must be a difference between racism which is about colour, and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street. You don't know… but if you see a Black person walking down the street, you see straightaway that they're Black. They are different types of racism.' She added: 'I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.' This is a salient point. There's clearly a marked difference in how a Black person or person of colour suffers racism compared to someone who is 'white passing'. When there were riots in Southport last year, racist thugs didn't double-check the identity of the Black or Brown people they were attacking – they worked solely on the basis of skin colour. Naughtie pressed further, saying the effect is 'the same if you are, going to a synagogue on a Saturday morning and you have to have guards outside because some people might come along and want to insult you or even throw things at you'. 'That's pretty much the same as the kind of thing you describe in your book is happening to you as a Black person,' he said. 'The fact is one is a person of colour and one isn't, is neither here nor there. If you suffered it, it's still damaging.' Abbott replied: 'It is here, because you can spot that person of colour from hundreds of yards away. That is what is different.' I understand what she means – but I see why the second point she made could be construed as dismissive. The fact is, if you go to the synagogue on Shabbat and are Jewish – and have white skin – that is not going to protect you from any antisemitic attack. We've not been able to have a grown-up conversation around race in the UK for quite some time now. For me personally, I felt a significant shift around the time of the Brexit vote, Trump's first victory across the pond and Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party. This is when, instead of being able to simply speak about my own lived experiences, I was being called upon to compare them to others – forced to participate in some sort of 'oppression Olympics' which I hadn't trained or signed up for. I've always believed that intersectionality is the way to best understand what other people are going through. You can draw on some of your own experiences, look at the similarities and listen when they explain the difference in order to be able to empathise. What Abbott is trying to highlight here, however clumsily, is assimilation. I know many people from Jewish families who have Anglicised names and this was a deliberate choice, but it's important to point out not all of us can do this successfully. Despite many people from the Caribbean community (which I am from) having Anglicised names, it makes no difference to the racism we face. In some cases, it only delays the inevitable. I've heard plenty of stories of our people turning up to a job interview and witnessing the palpable disappointment of the panel when they realise 'Jason Davies' is actually a Black man. I deliberated long and hard on what to name my son, and in the end, I decided to give him an unmistakeably African name so people knew what they were getting – and there would be no surprises. My friend Iain decided to give his daughter an Anglicised name so that she could at least get her foot in the door, knowing that sometimes CVs and applications are thrown away just because you have a Black-sounding name. This is how early we start to worry about these things. But my experience is also different in other ways. I don't have to sit listening to people crack racist jokes because they don't realise I'm Black – that is obvious to them – yet my Jewish friends have had to listen to tasteless Holocaust jokes, because no one realises they're Jewish. Racism is often doled out due to perception. Gary Lineker, for example, has discussed being racially abused as a child because of his dark skin, despite being white; yet Meghan Markle has spoken about not suffering the level of racism growing up as she does now because people didn't realise she was half Black. Orthodox Jews are identifiable from the religious attire they wear in the same way that some Muslims are (those who wear thobes or hijabs.) But in dire circumstances, such as threat to life, these things can be removed. In Islam there is something called Taqiyya (annoyingly misused on social media) which allows you to conceal your faith in times of danger and persecution. Black people can't do this. If only Stephen Lawrence or Anthony Walker had been able to run around a corner and remove their skin in order to save their lives. The GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) community may able to walk down the street as individuals and blend in to mainstream society in a way that I can't, but that doesn't negate the horrendous levels of discrimination they face within the education system, the legislative changes and even just trying to have a drink or a meal. They are refused service and suffer crude racism in a way Abbott confidently asserts doesn't happen as overtly to Black people anymore. She said, 'they may think the same thoughts, but they know it's not acceptable to express them.' To my mind, Starmer has either made a serious mistake here, or the disrespect he has repeatedly shown Abbott and the wider Black community since the start of his leadership is set to continue. His failure to address the findings in the Forde Report (which was commissioned to examine the level of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the party) resulted in many leaving the party altogether. Some found a home elsewhere, while other MPs disengaged with politics altogether. The blind loyalty afforded to the Labour Party over the years since the overtly racist 1964 Smethick campaign where the Tories used the slogan: 'If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour' no longer exists. Now, a new generation of voters – some of whom are going to be as young as 16 – are looking at how Starmer's Labour operates a hierarchy of racism; how he gave a speech on immigration that many compared to Enoch Powell and then stood by his comments that the UK risked becoming an 'island of strangers'. Downing Street said Starmer 'completely rejected' suggestions he echoed Powell. In the words of Professor Gus John, if he didn't know what he was invoking, he is simply not fit to be prime minister. Racism manifests itself in different ways. There is nothing wrong with pointing this out. And unless we are able to have difficult conversations around the subject – which includes allowing people to make honest mistakes – we will never even come close to starting to resolve it. But maybe some people just don't want to.
