The Philpster exhausts his repertoire with return to Rwanda at PMQs
Thoughts and prayers with Alex Burghart. Not so long ago, the shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster was allowed out by Kemi Badenoch to stand in for her at prime minister's questions when Keir Starmer was otherwise engaged. Though this may be a memory Alex wishes to forget. It wasn't his finest hour. Angela Rayner ran rings around him without even breaking sweat.
So, on Wednesday, Alex found himself sidelined. Not wanted on voyage. From time to time, he would check his phone for messages. Just in case he had missed something. Willing his phone to ping with a late call-up. Nothing. He just had to suck it up. Take his place on the opposition frontbench and cheer on some other poor sucker. Maybe it was for the best. Some men are born failures. Some achieve failure. Some have failure thrust upon them. Alex is unique. A combination of all three.
Instead it was Chris Philp who got the job. Given the nod by Kemi shortly after breakfast and with next to no time to prepare. The last man standing who can be trusted to be loyal. Or more or less competent. In his own way. At least some of his neural pathways function as they should.
The Philpster is Team Kemi through and through. Up until Team Kemi is no longer a thing. Much as he was with Team Truss. Then he will be his own man. Left to ponder that no one will ever be Team Philp. Chris even looks and sounds a bit like Kemi. Just not as good. Imagine. But this was his moment. His time. It might never happen again. He could be a hero. Just for one day.
Also having an unexpectedly good day was Keir. Of all the days to miss PMQs, this was a good one. A nice snooze on the flight back from Canada. No tricky questions on why the G7 turned into the G6. No having to cover for a US president who seemed to imagine he was the star of his own first-person-shooter computer game. No having to look his own MPs in the eye as his government published its new welfare bill. Over to Angie.
Philp stuck to what he knew. Grooming gangs and immigrants. Which all felt rather familiar. As if we all knew what everyone was going to say before they said it. After all, Kemi had had her say in answer to Yvette Cooper's Commons statement on Monday. The next day she and the Philpster had held their own press conference to fill in any gaps. And now? Now, it was third time lucky. So far, they had consistently struck the wrong note. Maybe this was the chance they needed. And it wasn't as if Chris was capable of coming up with any other questions.
This was all about the survivors, said Philp. Which was a decent place to start, given that he and Kemi had previously made it all about them. A bit of a stretch given that neither had shown much interest in the scandal when they had been in government. Rayner thanked him for his tone and assured the house that the inquiry would be comprehensive and would put the victims first.
After that, it was all rather downhill. Maybe it was nerves, but the Philpster got increasingly shouty and squeaky. His voice racing through the octaves. Starmer should apologise for calling people 'far right' and 'racist' for having demanded an inquiry. Ange corrected him. Keir had only been calling out those who had previously shown no interest in grooming gangs and, besides, he had also done more to secure convictions as director of public prosecutions than the Tory government had managed in 14 years.
It was just weird to think that Philp and Kemi were now positioning themselves as the champions of the survivors, but we were where we were. Chris moved on to his next pet subject. Illegal immigrants. One or two of the people who had arrived on small boats were implicated in child sexual exploitation. Therefore, it followed that every illegal immigrant was probably a paedophile. And should be killed. Or something.
And another thing … The Philpster was racing through his desperately limited repertoire and was already struggling. Rwanda. If only Labour hadn't closed down the Rwanda scheme, then already more than a million immigrants – although why stop at those arriving by small boat? Why not go for those with visas too? – would have been safely rehoused in Rwanda to fight in the war with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
'The deputy prime minister has a brass neck,' he declared. For … for stating the obvious. That Rwanda was always going to fail. Rishi Sunak would never have called a general election last July if he had believed in the scheme. But to his dying breath, Chris will insist otherwise. He just needed a few more days, a week, even. Then he coulda been a contender.
We ended where we always end on these occasions. Nowhere very much. Philp may have disappointed the Tory benches who had been hoping for a miracle, but Rayner hadn't exactly shone. It was as though she didn't believe the lines she had been given to read out. Was starting to wonder if neither the Tories nor Labour had all the answers. A revelation that comes to all sentient politicians in the end. You could chalk it up as a win for Ange. Largely because she's the more engaging. She connects to people. They believe her.
Well, not all. Labour's Sarah Champion managed to throw a dampener on proceedings, saying she had had enough of point scoring from all sides of the house over the grooming gangs. The victims had even been failed by the criminal injuries compensation scheme. Time for everyone to up their game.
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