Caesar or Macbeth – Starmer’s penultimate PMQs was farce not tragedy | Politics | News
Starmer trudged through his penultimate PMQs (Image: Getty)
What tragedy is this? Julius Caesar or Macbeth? Or have I misjudged it all? There’s no aura of noble decline, more A Comedy of Errors.
Keir Starmer endured his penultimate PMQs knowing well the final act was here. On he trudged toward the exit at Macbeth’s petty pace: tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Flanked by his ever-loyal centurions, Reeves and Lammy, our outgoing Caesar stood guarded against his Brutus.
Burnham however, hadn’t even bothered to turn up.
They’d kept a seat empty for him at the back mind you. A throne held in reverence for the coming King. One half expected a shaft of Mancunian light to pierce the rafters and anoint it.
Undeterred, Sir Keir mounted a robust defence of his record, cheered on by the clucking hens of the backbench, so enamoured of their master that they’d rather see him gone.
The defence investment plan, never mind the £5billion crater beneath it, had “strengthened our international leadership.”
His benches offered up a meek cheer, but then he wished the NHS a happy 75th, and lo, they erupted.
Jubilation was short-lived. Everywhere the poor man looked, a ghost glared back.
Behind him scowled one former minister who’d quit over the wretched plan; at the chamber’s mouth loomed another, John Healey. Keir was penned in by his own dead.
Up rose Kemi Badenoch, exasperated and (like the rest of us) waiting for Burnham.
Thrice she demanded whether the King who was promised had signed off on the black hole.
Badenoch: If Labour can’t defend us what’s point (Image: Getty)
But Keir, one eye on the post-resignation sun lounger, could not be roused, preferring to biff the Tories instead.
Could he even count, she wondered? “I can count! The Kremlin can count!” Kemi boomed. “If the Labour party cannot defend our country, then what is the point of them?”
Then the post-curtain sting, from the very woman who lit the fuse: Catherine West, the backbencher whose call for a challenger triggered this whole bloodbath in the first place.
Her question was dull as ditchwater, a nod to his work abroad, pointedly not at home. A dagger, twisted with a smile.
Dour faces all round. Yet Sir Keir beamed, buoyant as a man already packed.
Caesar or Macbeth, farce or tragedy: in the end he was but a walking shadow, a poor player, and his hour upon this stage is very nearly done.
