This is all going very well. A prophetic PMQs showed us that Keir Starmer’s government really is going to change Britain in ways unimaginable to us now.
But first, the question emerged from the session – how prime ministerial is the Prime Minister? Let’s leave aside the way he twice called Rishi Sunak “Prime Minister” – that’s a mistake anyone can make (just ask the Tory party). Rishi brought up the fact that a number of export licenses for arms to Israel had been revoked – an issue thrilling with atrocities, ethical conundrums, mutual claims of genocide and geopolitical consequences up to and including Armageddon.
Keir presented a sober response in terms of applying the requirement for reviewing the legal framework which was last reviewed in 2021 and under the most recent review brought them to a clear legal conclusion which was shared with Parliament (are you with him so far?).
In that way he has, of appealing to the judge and not the jury, he said that “applying the framework did not allow me to ignore the decision of the assessment”, whatever that assessment might have been, and that “It was a legal decision not a policy decision,” and finally, “It’s not about Israel.”
Not what?
It was, he said, about all licences.
It was a bloodless, bureaucratic reply that lacked heart or flesh, or bone, or anything at all, really. It wouldn’t stand up as an argument against the Anti-Christ in the fires of a global apocalypse – but that may be asking too much of a former Director of Public Prosecutions.
In other questions, “Actions not slogans,” he sloganed. Black hole made several appearance as did “broke the economy”. We were reminded that his first priority was “to stabilize the economy”. What with four day weeks, Day One rights and multiple tax hikes the economy should be stabilized to a standstill. It was here that Keir’s revolutionary powers became apparent.
New MP Harriet Cross teed him up with her debut question pounding away with the projections from the oil and gas industry – that windfall taxes would result in investment losses of £13bn and 35,000 jobs as investment in the North Sea was slashed with energy companies drifting away. She also allowed her listeners to dwell lovingly on the loss of £12bn in tax revenues and the “economic suicide” that we will surely face.
It was a throwaway line in response to this that revealed Keir’s capacity for national change. He told the Commons that the latest funding round for renewables had allowed 133 projects to go ahead and that they will power 11 million homes.
It is “practically Hitler” to point it out, but the PM has neglected to apply the appropriate load factors to the projects – solar, for instance generates just 10% of the power it says on the name plate, and onshore wind only 25%. The 11 million homes are in reality more like six million. Or 11 million homes getting power twelve hours a day. The costs of “the cheapest form of energy” will escalate the more of it we have.
After five years of turning the country into “a clean energy superpower” of “creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying green jobs” and “reducing energy bills for every household” – it is clear that Government will have transformed our sclerotic, WRAC-ridden, barely-functioning country into a shivering economic shambles with the most punitive energy bills in the world and the highest hypothermia deaths outside Soviet gulags.
Is it too legalistic to suggest that prior legislation might be modified to stop it all? The Clerk could revive the Buggery Act of 1531, and repurpose it to apply to nations. It may be the only way to stop Ed Miliband in his dark and dreadful work.
