Keir Starmer milks his stock answer for all it’s worth: ‘£22bn black hole’ | John Crace

This could go on for months. Years, possibly. The ultimate get-out clause. The answer to every question. Tricky or otherwise. Why are things so crap at the moment? Because the last government ruined the public finances. Why did it take me so long to get to work today? £22bn black hole . Everything is explained by Tory cover-ups and incompetence. And by and large, rightly so. The headline takeaway from the last election was that everyone was sick to the back teeth of the Conservatives.

None of which makes for a particularly interesting prime minister’s questions. Back in the Tory dog days, there was some edge. Some jeopardy. How was Rishi Sunak going to dodge his way out of the latest shitshow? Now, not so much. Not at all, in fact. It all feels a bit of a snooze. Just another piece of parliamentary routine.

All of which suits Keir Starmer just fine. He knows he’s not a box office performer at the dispatch box. He doesn’t have that sort of charisma. He’s never going to have his MPs falling about in the aisles with his killer punchlines. So he doesn’t bother trying. No wasting hours preparing for PMQs. Just a quick look through the files to remind him who will be asking the questions and then deliver the stock answer. £22bn.

Boredom is Starmer’s secret weapon. One that he’s determined to use for as long as possible – and he can get away with it because it is laced with sincerity. Almost everyone believes he is telling the truth when he says the Tories have wrecked the country. We’d like him to be a bit more cheerful. To offer us a flicker of hope. But you can’t have everything. Rather someone who looks as if he knows what he is doing than another fantasist.

No wonder, then, that Sunak has all but given up. Nowadays he feels so diminished that he appears to occupy negative space. No one is even aware he is in the room. On Wednesday there wasn’t even a murmur when he squeezed in between Oliver Dowden and Mims Davies on the frontbench. Rather a state of entropy as he collapsed in on himself. Not even a smile. His eyes are dead. He can’t wait for this all to end. The chances of him lasting the parliament as an MP? Less than zero.

Rish! isn’t the only one running on fumes. Jeremy Hunt looks to have aged a decade in the last few months. It would be nice to think that the weight of his failings had finally caught up with him. But that is to credit him with too much self-awareness. Rather, it is more a sense of a world order that has slipped out of alignment. People like him were born to rule. Not to be also-rans. He looks like someone tormented by nightmares over which he has no control. Free-floating anxiety flashing through his synapses.

Of the four remaining Tory leadership contenders, only James Cleverly bothered to make an appearance. And he looked as if he would rather have been somewhere else. Jimmy Dimly glanced at his phone in a trancelike state. Wondering whatever possessed him to chance his arm as leadership material. Who in their right mind would want to lead the Tories in their current state? Luckily for him, he’s got no chance. Maybe someone should pass the news on to him.

For his opening three questions, Sunak chose to mention the cuts in winter fuel allowance. Late in the day, Rish! has become a paid-up Corbynista, suddenly desperate to get his hands on the holy grail of Jezza’s impact assessment that found that 4,000 pensioners might die. Keir did what Keir does. £22bn . It wasn’t long before Sunak got bored with caring about pensioners. They weren’t his problem any more. So instead he rattled on about farming, which he also doesn’t give a toss about. Keir again yelled “£22bn” and everyone nodded off back to sleep. It was as dull as it was pointless.

There’s no way back from this for the Tories at the moment. Their world has become utterly binary. Either they maintain that they left the economy in fine shape and insist Labour are catastrophising, in which case they have to explain why everyone else has got the opposite impression, or they have to fess up and take their punishment beating. Not surprisingly, they tend to prefer the delusional cul-de-sac.

People almost woke up for Nigel Farage’s first ever contribution to PMQs. Then dozed off when they realised he was off on his hobby-horse about two-tier policing. Nige was horrified that some prisoners were being released early so that some of his friends who’d been inciting rioters to set fire to refugee hostels could be locked up. One day Nige might even remember that one of his fellow Reform MPs has done time. You’d have thought he might have more compassion for ex-cons.

Keir just blanked him. Talked instead of the state in which the Tories had left the Prison Service. The £22bn variant. How Sunak had been warned by his own justice secretary that things had reached breaking point. Rish! tried to make himself invisible. The Tory benches fell silent. The first glimpse of reality creeping in from the opposition in weeks.

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But then there is no comeback for failure in Westminster. MPs who have conspired to make the UK much worse off than it need have been are rewarded with untold baubles and riches. Honours. Second jobs. Seek and ye shall find. Take Chris Grayling. The Tories’ new patron saint of incompetence. The guiding role model for any MP worried about being too useless for the job.

On Wednesday afternoon, Failing Grayling was in the Lords to be formally admitted to the upper chamber. Lord Failing of Grayling. The worst justice secretary. The worst transport secretary. The man who destroyed the probation service. The man who handed out contracts to ferry companies that had no ferries. A man who brought shame on the Commons.

And yet. And yet nothing so bad that he couldn’t be offered a peerage. Though Failing is far from the only shocker in the Lords. The place is riddled with them. Anyone for Lord Big Dave? Who knows? Maybe it won’t be long before countless other Commons derelicts join him. For establishment failures, the only way is up. Vive la révolution .