Matt Vickers (Con) asked Lammy about youth unemployment. What was to blame? Was it business rates going up, the jobs tax, the Employment Rights Act, or all of the above?
In response. Lammy condemned Vickers, a deputy chair of the Conservative party, for remarks he made about Keir Starmer in a TV interview yesterday.
double quotation mark [In the interview] he’s laughing. joking about the arson attack on the prime minister’s home … Not only that, he joined with promoting conspiracies about the attack and laughed along to demeaning homophobic remarks. He should be ashamed of himself. My advice to him is to grow up, apologise and do considerably better.
The Labour adviser Damian McBride has some ace PMQs trivia.
double quotation mark By my count, Claire Coutinho was the 45th different person to stand at the despatch box for PMQs since the once-a-week era began in 1997,. the Lammy vs Coutinho match-up was the 26th different pairing since the 2015 election, seven of them coming in the past two years.
Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent.
At their post-PMQs briefing. asked about Matt Vickers’ comments about the arson attack on the PM’s property in a TV interview yesterday (see 12.31pm ), a Conservative spokesperson said the Tory deputy chair was just being “polite” when he laughed along with homophobic jokes on Talk Radio.
The spokesperson said:
double quotation mark If you listen to what Matt Vickers says, he doesn’t actually say anything wrong in the clip. He was trying to be polite.
Asked why Vickers did not challenge supposed humour about the case of two men convicted of arson attacks on property connected to Keir Starmer referencing “rent boys”. “back doors”, he added:
double quotation mark Matt didn’t say anything wrong in his commentary. was trying to be polite to the host of a programme where he was being interviewed.
You can watch the clip here and decide for yourself. While in his initial response Vickers did say that the arson trial illustrated a “serious point” about Russian influence. he also went on to jokingly dismiss the notion that “there’s some secret Russian effort to destabilise this country”.
Come back next week. In seven days’ time, PMQs should be a moment of intense drama, where 30 minutes of questions in the cockpit of democracy,. how the PM responds, should tell us a lot whether he still retains authority, the currency of leadership. The jeers. jibes at PMQs can seem trite and pointless, but sometimes they function as the ultimate test of power, and that is a challenge Keir Starmer will face soon.
Today, though, it was one of those trite and pointless days.
Claire Coutinho is shadow energy secretary,. most of her questions were about the North Sea where, at least on Rosebank and Jackdaw, the internal Labour party argument is heading a bit closer to the Tory position. But you would not have necessarily guessed that from Coutinho, who seemed over-reliant on jokes. who ended with a very weird “Why is he here?” question. (See 12.17pm.) It was perfectly acceptable knockabout, but lightweight rather than commanding. Lammy was not much better in his responses, which lent heavily on whataboutery. But, later, he did produce some much more confident answers which enthused Labour MPs, particularly on Matt Vickers (see 12.31pm ), on Reform UK (see 12.35pm ). on the Belfast pogrom rioting (see 12.22pm ). It was job done, but nothing special.
Mark Pritchard (Con) said Lammy was looking very prime ministerial today. Pritchard said he would vote for him as PM.
He said Stoke Heath, a small settlement in the Wrekin, is getting 121 asylum seekers. That amounts to a 35% increase in its population. That was equivalent to 44,000 going into Lammy’s constituency, he said.
double quotation mark Whilst this is a tolerant nation. a compassionate nation and an understanding nation, does the deputy prime minister agree with me that that level of dispersal into a small, isolated rural community is just isn’t fair?
Lammy said the government had reduced net migration. He said it was difficult if people called for illegal migrants to be removed,. then objected to them being detained. But he said he did not know the details of this case. An immigration minister would look at it, he said.
Josh Babarinde, the Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne, said Eastbourne pier was an iconic part of his town’s heritage. And it was also an iconic part of him, he said – he had a tattoo of it. He offered to show it to Lammy. And he asked what the government was doing to protect the pier.
Lammy said he never expected an invitation like that. But he said the government was allocating £20m to Eastbourne through the Pride in Place scheme.
Bradley Thomas (Con) asked what the government was doing to mitigate the impact of the steel tariffs being imposed by the US?
Lammy said this was a serious issue. He said the government had legislated to help the steel industry,. he said tariffs had come up as an issue at the G7 summit.
Louie French (Con) asked Lammy if he agreed. Sadiq Khan was wrong to stop the Met police giving a contract to Palantir. He said this would make Londoners less safe.
Lammy said he would take no lectures from the Tories on crime given Boris Johnson’s record on this issue.
Sarah Owen (Lab) asked Lammy about Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate in Makerfield. She said he has said most abortions are for vanity purposes, and endorsed a sexually explicit comment about Carol Vorderman. She said this showed Reform UK’s hypocrisy on women. And they had also welcomed a woman-beater into their number, she said.
Lammy said Owen had made a powerful point. He went on:
double quotation mark The prime minister has rightly put tackling violence against women. girls at the heart of this Labour government.
By contrast. I’ve been utterly appalled by what we’ve heard from the Reform candidate in Makerfield, from vile sexist comments to saying Putin was within his rights to invade Ukraine.
When the Reform leader was asked about them, his answer was, ‘So what?’ This speaks volumes about Reform.
The only way to stop their politics of grievance is to vote Labour.
Matt Vickers (Con) asked Lammy about youth unemployment. What was to blame? Was it business rates going up, the jobs tax, the Employment Rights Act, or all of the above?
In response. Lammy condemned Vickers, a deputy chair of the Conservative party, for remarks he made about Keir Starmer in a TV interview yesterday.
double quotation mark [In the interview] he’s laughing. joking about the arson attack on the prime minister’s home … Not only that, he joined with promoting conspiracies about the attack and laughed along to demeaning homophobic remarks. He should be ashamed of himself. My advice to him is to grow up, apologise and do considerably better.
Daisy Cooper. the deputy Lib Dem leader, asked if the government would back the Lib Dem plan to fund more defence spending through bonds.
Lammy said the government was working with allies to improve defence procurement and funding.
Cooper asked if Lammy agreed it was time for Labour to rip up its red lines on getting closer to the EU.
Lammy said the government was sticking to its red lines, but wanted an SPS deal to improve trade. a youth experience scheme.
Claire Hanna, the SDLP leader, says loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the rioting in Belfast last week. They organised a pogrom, she says. She asks if the government will review how the Northern Ireland executive is handling this problem.
Lammy says what happened in Belfast was racism. He goes on:
double quotation mark We must never go back to 1950s Britain. where my father arrived to signs saying, ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.’
We are focused on bringing people together. that includes providing a further £24m to help tackle paramilitarism and to tackle those inciting hatred online.
And our social cohesion plan is about bringing our communities together.
Coutinho asks, if everything is fine, “why is he here?” She says the government is on life support.
Lammy says he is here because he is standing in for the prime minister.
Coutinho says, if everything is going so well, why did half the defence team resign. And she claims Ed Miliband is out of control.
Lammy says defence spending is higher than it was under the Tories. And he says under the Tories two defence secretaries quit in disgrace (Gavin Williamson. Michael Fallon), and he says Ben Wallace admitted hollowing out the armed forces.
Coutinho says half the cabinet will be getting a pay cut soon. She asks why Ed Miliband ghosted the PM on a matter of national security. (See 11.11am.)
Lammy says Coutinho should not believe everything that she reads in the paper.
The energy department will contribute to the defence investment plan, he says.
And he says energy bills would be higher if the UK had followed Kemi Badenoch’s advice. got involved in the Iran war.
Discussion
Sign in to join the thread, react, and share images.