Chancellor Rachel Reeves made a very brave claim on behalf of the Labour Party (Image: PA Wire)
Washing machines, as we are so regularly assured, live longer with Calgon.
Ad it is inn the true spirit of the soul-corrodingly annoying advertising jingle that Labour’s speech writers went to work today.
Double-bubble: Rachel Reeves’ regurgitating of ’s old manifesto, sorry I mean Rachel Reeves’ unveiling of Labour’s pioneering new plan for growth, then at Prime Minister’s Questions.
So we had wannabe slogans “we need to go further faster” mechanistically trotted out repeatedly, together with “Europe’s silicon valley” “making Britain better connected”, blah blah.
Repeated by both the Chancellor and Prime Minister, in the vain hope they would seep into the collective consciousness like “have a break, have a kit-kat” or “nine out of ten cats prefer Whiskas”.
In future I’d suggest the Labour backroom boys accompany the “messaging” with an actual jingle, y’know, something we could all whistle on the way to work.
Assuming we still have jobs of course. I suspect they are so desperate they might actually try it.
Singalong with me: “You need a cure but we’ve got a plaster, and a glib refrain to go further faster” (You can have that for free chaps).
It’s all a bit pitiful isn’t it. Pitiful and it insults our intelligence.
Just hot air. Baloney. All talk, and no action. Plans and proposals, and no action.
We’ll bring down immigration – and no action.
We’ll kick start growth – and no action.
We’ll build a new airport – and no action.
We’ll put more money in your pocket – and no action.
achieved more in the first 20 minutes of his presidency than this lot have in six months.
Which is perhaps why in a vox pop in the Telegraph today showed lots of people on the streets of Britain said we need a Trump. Not a pompous orange man with a galactic scale ego of course, but someone who does things, rather than just talking about doing things.
But here we are.
On the up side however, this was if we cared to note, a line in the sand day.
I’ve been asking in recent weeks when this Labour Party will stop blaming the for everything… what exactly would be the cut off date.
Turns out it’s today, with Rachel Reeves very bravely claiming “we have returned stability to the economy.”
So from this moment, it’s on them. No whining about the extremely dubious but incessantly referred-to “£22bn black hole” left by the .
It’s just down to Rachel and Keir now.
Don’t miss…
But, enough of that, you really want to know who won PMQs don’t you?
Well, Kemi, I’d say but not by much.
Not by much at all.
She made an excellent point – saying Keir had literally stated that anything which ran counter to growth would be scrapped, but then he’d introduced the Employment Bill which, the Government’s own figures concluded, would cost British business £5bn.
“Will he drop it?” she asked, almost too politely.
As per, the beknighted one waffled on about the IMF or something and signally refused to answer the question – and when he does that he’s basically sticking two fingers up to you and me remember.
This is not Prime Minister’s Ignore the .
But then she let him off. Yes she said something about the PM having “misled the house” which earned her a slap-down from the Speaker but she should have been on an on and on and on at him, Jeremy Paxman like, until he had to give us an answer.
She should have been raising the temperature, skewering him and holding his feet to the flame, properly getting him rattled so that her absolutely accurate pay-off line that the only beneficiaries of the Employment Bill were the lawyers and the unions was a serious body-blow to the lawyer in the pay of the unions.
In the event it petered out, lost in the hot air. Elswhere the fare was thin gruel.
Deirdre Costigan (Lab Ealing Southall) pointed out a huge number of children were sleeping on sofa’s and floors (and as a dad who’s son had his first teenage party last weekend I can confirm they are also downing your best scotch and leaving vomit all over your toilet seat.)
Andy McNae (Lab Rossendale and Darwen) made the truest statement the House had heard for some time, to wit “Lancashire is a wonderful county” (Mr Speaker am I required to declare and interest here?… ) and Emily Thornberry got to her feet to campaign on behalf of MI6 operatives who were sacked for being gay – thereby overturning the reasonably commonly-held belief (particularly among Le Carre fans) that being gay was in the job description.
And finally we had some reality.
An MP close to tears over something that mattered. Calvin Bailey (Lab Wansted and Leyton) – or Wing Commander Bailey to his ex-RAF pals – got to his feet to recount the lives of a planeful of men who died in the Iraq conflict.
His name-checking of Smudge, Gibbo and Jonesy gave the announcement a grounded realism all too often absent from this chamber of abstraction and political point-scoring.
Choking back tears, pausing to breathe, he said: “These people were killed on a flight out of Baghdad as the result of a poorly-protected aircraft,” and would the PM recognise their “service and sacrifice”.
Of course Keir did.
But it is moments like this in PMQs which remind you how much power those people in that chamber wield in our name.
It is fairly certain that as a nation we are going to have to re-arm soon, and if Mr Bailey’s brief intervention means our service men and women get safer, better, kit, then this PMQs was not entirely wasted.