“What is the Government doing to bring down inflation?” It was the first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions of Alex Burghart, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, deputed by Kemi Badenoch to stand in for her because Sir Keir Starmer was on his way back from Brazil, where the nuts come from.
A good opening question, brief and hard to answer, as inflation has just risen.
Angela Rayner, standing in for Starmer, had the wit not to try to answer it. She said Burghart was the Minister for Growth under Liz Truss, when inflation was 11.1 per cent.
Burghart smiled in an amiable way. He is a historian by training, whose doctoral thesis was on The Mercian polity, 716-918, and presumably he has some sketchy recollections of the Truss polity too.
Those of us who love history were hoping Burghart might range at ease over our island story, for he mentioned in his maiden speech that the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 “started on the high street in Brentwood”, which is in his constituency, and was “a rebellion against vexatious taxation levied by a distant, overbearing Government”.
But he decided, no doubt wisely, to stick to the present day, and referred to some “City economists, real economists, Mr Speaker”, a pleasant jibe at the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose credentials as an economist have been found to contain an element of make-believe.
We are still, however, at the make-believe stage of this Government. Ministers still believe they know what they are doing, and events have yet to prove they don’t have the faintest idea.
Rayner was at her ease. She smiled a lot in a regal way, referred with satisfaction to the general election result, and was not in the slightest bit put out when Burghart accused the Government of handing out a punishment beating “to people who don’t vote Labour” – farmers, parents with children at private school, people running small businesses.
Every week, Rayner retorted, the Opposition “jump on a new bandwagon”. She was then asked by Daisy Cooper, standing in for Sir Ed Davey to put the Lib Dems’ two questions, about the impact of the rise in National Insurance on social care providers.
Cooper claimed the effect of the rise, even after the Government has put in extra money, will be to take £200 million out of the sector.
Rayner said in an airy, unconcerned manner that the Government will ensure that social care is protected. Again, we shall see. Cooper mentioned Kathy, a farmer in her constituency of St Albans who says farmers feel they “were betrayed by the Conservatives”, but now also feel they have been “lied to by Labour”.
“I’m sorry Kathy is distressed,” Rayner replied, “by what I would say is scaremongering.” This worked fine, but will it go on working fine, or is she starting to sound a bit like Marie Antoinette?
Marie Antoinette used to entertain her friends at a toy farm. There is an odd, out-of-touch feel about Rayner and some of her friends, as if they are just playing at being in Government, saying the kind of things they are expected to say, oblivious to anything happening outside the palace and park at Versailles.
Graham Stringer (Lab, Blackley and Middleton South) wondered if Rayner was as distressed as he was by the “Stasi-like” interview given by Essex police to Allison Pearson, of The Daily Telegraph, and whether Rayner agreed that the police would be “better dealing with shoplifting, burglaries and other crimes rather than intimidating journalists”.
Well said Stringer, with his glimpse of life beyond the park gates. Rayner said she could not comment on a particular case, but is in favour of a free press.
