The truly shocking performance by Sir Keir Starmer in the Commons reminded me of the gag about the British Airways plane which crashed in the middle of the Sahara.
The pilot called the survivors together and said there was good and bad news.
A passenger asked: ‘’What’s the bad news?’’
The pilot said: ‘’There’s nothing to eat except camel dung.’’
And the good news?
The pilot replied: ‘’There’s plenty of it.’’
In a dreadful 17 minutes, the nation was covered in political dung by this Prime Minister. And there was plenty of it.
His explanation was what you would expect. Basically, a Boris Johnson jobbie with nobs on. Nothing to do with me, squire, all the fault of civil servants.
The only time that he correctly judged the view of the country was when he said: ‘’I know many will find these facts incredible.’’
Plenty of jeers at stating the bleeding obvious.
Do include me in that number. It’s quite clear that loads knew Mandelson had failed security. Journalists knew, civil servants knew. Surprised Big Issue sellers didn’t know. Only Starmer didn’t know. How is that possible?
Seven months ago, David Maddox, the political editor of The Independent, exclusively reported that Mandelson had failed vetting.
So Starmer’s explanation that he had no idea until last Tuesday strikes me as inconceivable.
It took 17 minutes for the PM to cover the nation in dung, but MPs should hold their nose - Kelvin MacKenzie | HOUSE OF COMMONS
I presume No.10 has a press cutting service. Would nobody have said to anybody at Downing Street, I see the Indie is saying he failed vetting. Is that true? Shall we check? It seems quite important.
Among those who clearly found Starmer’s explanation ‘’incredible’’, and by the look of them found the smell of dung quite offensive, were David Lammy and Rachel Reeves, who had the misfortune of sitting on either side of Starmer and therefore caught constantly on camera.
Both looked as though they had received a harpoon up their rear ends.
Mind you, I suspect both will have enjoyed Starmer being publicly tortured. Neither has anything to thank him for.
He booted Lammy out of the Foreign Office to the distant Ministry of Justice, and Ms Reeves was allowed to weep without Starmer even offering her a hankie.
Lammy in particular appeared to be enjoying Starmer’s ludicrous explanation. The constant semi-sneer on his face indicated he was thinking to himself that with a little luck, Starmer will be pushed out, and he will be called by his party to take the job.
The reality is that the House of Commons is the only place where the ability to mislead is considered a prerequisite for promotion. MPs will have admired Starmer for being able to dance on a hatpin.
In any career, he would have been fired on the spot for incompetence. Firstly, for the shocking misjudgement of making a convicted paedo’s friend our Ambassador in the United States, then showing such little interest that he never followed the security trail.
It now emerges that Mandelson, while our envoy, saw every serious piece of intelligence. And almost certainly a good dollop of America’s as well.
How awful. Yet Starmer never thought, in the light of Mandelson’s emails to Epstein, where he was sending secret stuff to the paedophile, that this might be a risk.
I don’t want Starmer to go. I would miss his incompetence. More importantly, every day he stays increases the chances of a Reform-Tory win.
May 7 will be a total disaster for Labour. And it will get worse as the years go on. Hoobloody ray.
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