QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir was a turbocharged Eeyore

QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir was a turbocharged Eeyore – all histrionics, alarums and bulged eyeballs…

Problem for Sir Keir Starmer. When you have refocused your party’s attacks on to saying the Tories made a Horlicks of economic recovery, and then that contention turns out to be factually untrue, you have what our German friends call ‘ein Katzenjammer’. A political hangover.

At PMQs Sir Keir did his normal thing of alighting on the week’s scalding-hot controversy. With his shiny red tie and razored bog-brush hairdo, the nasal knight flew at Rishi Sunak and accused him of untold wickedness on the schools concrete crisis. Mr Sunak was a rich cur who did not care about other people’s children!

Histrionics. Alarums. Bulged eyeballs. Sir Keir called government ministers a bunch of ‘cowboys’ and said children in schools were ‘cowering under steel girders’. He made them sound like smudge-faced urchins from the poster for Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Miserables.

The Labour leader spat out the words, adopted the tough-guy routine and made it all sound tremendously worrying. He was a turbocharged Eeyore, a surfer of setbacks, an adenoidal alarmist to topple the late Arthur Schopenhauer for the title ‘king of pessimists’. Those of us who used to be gossip-columnists sympathised. On days when the column was short of substance, the advice was always ‘give it a bit of topspin’.

At PMQs Sir Keir (pictured) did his normal thing of alighting on the week’s scalding-hot controversy

With his shiny red tie and razored bog-brush hairdo, the nasal knight flew at Rishi Sunak (pictured) and accused him of untold wickedness on the schools concrete crisis

Then Mr Sunak spoke about the new economic data which has corrected earlier statistics and shows that Britain in fact bounced back economically from lockdown better than our European counterparts. Conservative MPs cheered. The rest of us, to use another German expression, may simply have thought ‘if Starmer’s Sturm und Drang on the economy was so wonky, maybe he’s off the pace on some of this other disaster-movie stuff, too’.

The Commons was its customary serene self: a jampot of tics and twitches and heckles. Theme of the day, thanks to Gillian Keegan’s TV obscenities on Monday, was backsides. A Scots Nat MP distinguished himself by saying the word ‘a*se’. And no, it wasn’t apse. Chris Law (Dundee West) thought he would make a name for himself by saying that Labour and the Conservatives were ‘two cheeks of the same a*se’ because their welfare policies were so similar. It took Speaker Hoyle a few seconds to realise what the burly Law had said. He requested milder language so that ‘the pride of this parliament will shine through’. Mr Law said ‘bottom’ instead.

READ MORE HERE: Keir Starmer claims children are ‘cowering under steel supports’ in classrooms as he slams Rishi Sunak’s ‘cowboy builder’ Government  

One of the policies mentioned by Mr Law was the bedroom tax. Remember that? At the time we were told it was going to be a calamity. And yet we survived.

Back to apses. ‘We’ve heard far too much recently about ministerial posteriors,’ announced the heroically pedestrian Mary Glindon (Lab, N Tyneside). All I could think about, as she said that, was what voluminous bags she herself might be wearing. A terrible image. I had just about rinsed my mind back to serious matters when Andy McDonald (Lab, Middlesbrough) described grotty school facilities in his constituency and encouraged the prime minister and Mrs Keegan, his Education Secretary, to ‘get off their derrieres’. A David Cameron might have complimented mirthless McDonald on his modern-language skills but Mr Sunak batted back a boringly safe reply. Rishi doesn’t really do jokes.

Mrs Keegan, since you ask, was half way down the government frontbench, far enough away from the PM not to infect him with anything politically unwholesome. She has become a wonderful cartoon villain, tossing her lustrous mane with affected nonchalence, curling her lip and shouting a derisive ‘oh, seriously!’ at Sir Keir’s attack line on the cowboys. She did not look entirely thrilled, either, when Kemi Badenoch turned up (typically) late and everyone on the ministerial bench had to squeeze tighter to accommodate the trade secretary’s petite rump. It used to be said that the next Conservative leadership contest was likely Kemi v Keegan. Not now, perhaps. Unless the schools concrete controversy evaporates like so many other crises.

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