I DON’T know whether to blame Twitter, Covid or Boris Johnson, but soundbite politics is infecting PMQs. It's making a nonsense of the idea that it’s meant to involve specific, serious questions being put to the Prime Minister and where appropriate making him squirm. Increasingly this pretence is being abandoned altogether, as opposition MPs compete to see who can 'bite back better, or come up with the most creative wording for a question that basically amounts to “Prime Minister, do you agree with me that you are awful?”
Things do get off to an encouraging start today with Keir Starmer calling for politicians to work together to end violence against women and girls following the killing of Sarah Everard, which he describes as a watershed moment. Johnson agrees this should be a turning point and that long-term cultural and societal change is needed. So far, so good.
READ MORE: Sarah Everard vigils continue as MPs debate controversial new policing bill
However, there then ensues a muddled squabble about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which was backed in a Commons vote last night in the face of Labour opposition. Johnson claims the bill “did a lot to protect women and girls”, to which Starmer retorts that it said “a lot more about protecting statues than it did about protecting women”. Ding ding! Soundbite alert.
Back to grown-up, collegiate discussion and Starmer is calling for a victims’ bill and actions to improve conviction rates for rape. Johnson would rather condemn him for not supporting a bill that would increase sentences and ensure offenders serve more of them in prison. One might ask how much of a difference the latter action would make given crime must be reported and perpetrators convicted before they can be sentenced, but Starmer takes the bait, pointing out that nothing in last night’s bill would have increased recent sentences of seven or nine years handed down to rapists. The maximum sentence for rape in England is already life, so unless he wants it to be death then I’m not sure his “statues vs women” line really stands up to scrutiny.
It’s a shame he didn’t use any of his question time to raise the problems Labour had with the bill’s restrictions on peaceful protest, but perhaps he hadn’t had time to come up with a snappy one-liner about that. It's left to Caroline Lucas of the Greens to raise these concerns, but since she only gets one go Johnson is able to simply swat them away by referencing Covid, suggesting he agrees with her about the right to protest and implying she's wrong to be worried about the reach of new laws.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson claims SNP MP's question on nuclear weapons was about indyref2
“Bairns not bombs” was the theme of Ian Blackford’s first question, rather awkwardly combining references to free school meals in England and the expansion of the UK’s nuclear arsenal stored in Scotland. He’d have been better going straight in with his second one, asking the PM “when the Scottish people gave him the moral or democratic authority to impose these weapons of mass destruction on our soil in Scotland.”
Johnson replies with a mini love-bomb, telling us “the people of Scotland contribute enormously to the health, happiness, wellbeing and security of this entire country” – this country presumably being England, and that contribution to supposed “security” being against our wishes.
Fortunately Peter Grant is waiting in the wings to back up Blackford, asking Johnson again what gives Johnson the right to add yet more deadly weapons to Faslane. Johnson has the perfect answer – pretend the question was about something else entirely! It might have sounded like a question about nuclear weapons but, actually it was a veiled demand for indyref2. He confirms that the only way to rid Scotland of these weapons is a vote for independence, which is certainly always a message worth repeating. Grant can only shake his head in disbelief as the PM grumbles about “democratic wrangling about democracy” (which is surely preferable to undemocratic wrangling about democracy) and the fact that the people of this country – again, England – voted for strong defences.
Tory MP Bernard Jenkins then pops up to say that the Scottish Government has rejected the integrated review of defence because “they hate the UK more than they want jobs for their own people”. Yes, he’s cracked it – the whole opposition to nuclear weapons is nothing but a sham, motivated by hate, whereas the UK’s stockpiling is an expression of love and kindness towards our international friends, and of generosity towards Scotland. Glad we’ve got that sorted out!
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