Nigel Farage just seized control of the agenda. Keir Starmer's actions today were the straw that broke the camel's back - Ann Widdecombe
Nigel Farage and Reform UK MPs walked out of the House of Commons during PMQs
|PA
Former minister Ann Widdecombe says Keir Starmer looks like a rabbit in headlights after repeatedly ducking and diving questions in the House of Commons
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The art of answering parliamentary questions is mastered by most ministers within five minutes of entering office and the interpretation of the uninformative replies by most MPs in a similarly short time frame.
“We have no plans to do so” does not mean “we will not do so” but rather, we are still working on the plans and will reveal them at a more politically opportune moment”.
“We are looking carefully at this” means not on your life.
“I am grateful to the honourable gentleman for raising this” means the exact opposite.
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All governments have been guilty of this but Keir Starmer more than most Prime Ministers prevaricates, dodges and dives. Appeals to the speaker are rarely productive as he or she will respond merely that ministers are responsible for the answers given not the Speaker. So, deprived of any realistic remedy, a mass walkout, such as that staged by Reform UK MPs this week, is about all that is open to the mother of parliaments.
There is another route and one that I often advocated but it is not taken up because it demands discipline and self-sacrifice, qualities insufficiently in evidence among MPs who want to make the most of their chance to ask a question in prime time and ride their own particular hobby horses.
The route I advocated was that the person with the first appearance on our side should ask a succinct question. When this was dodged the next person should repeat it and so on until it looked like the parliamentary equivalent of Paxman’s famous fourteen questions to Michael Howard.
Reform MPs might well do that but they are too few as yet to dominate the order paper, so they instead gave a visual and unmissable response to yet another non-answer.
It echoes the incident in the EU parliament in 2019 when Brexit Party MPs turned their backs on mass when the EU anthem was played. It is not, we said, a nation and we will not recognise a national anthem.
So, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back this Wednesday? Nigel Farage asked Keir Starmer if, given the tens of thousands of people coming in on small boats, he had clearly failed to smash the gangs or to otherwise control the situation and Keir Starmer replied with a personal attack covering council tax, the Iran war and other issues but ignoring the actual question.
As a result of the walk-out, at least the public will now know that the PM cannot provide a straight answer to a straight question, which is unlikely to cause him to mend his ways but which will cause commentators to be a bit more alert.
Kemi Badenoch commented that she had asked the Prime Minister six questions last week and that he had not answered a single one.
His stonewalling over Mandelson exasperated friend and foe alike. Again he chose to raise extraneous issues rather than engage with what was asked. He just will not give a straight answer to a straight question.
I once complained to the then Speaker about Tony Blair’s non-answers but Keir Starmer is in a class of his own.
Given that he is a lawyer, his ducking and diving are not even slick or clever. He looks, as ever, like a rabbit in headlights.
Perhaps next time he does it, all the Opposition parties should walk out. Some chance.