Nandy takes on the trolls, first Piers … then Boris?
It’s been quite the 24 hours for Lisa Nandy. First her rival Jess Phillips pulled out of the Labour leadership contest and gave Nandy her backing. Then she picked up her third union nomination, ensuring she would make it through to the final ballot. But best of all she gave Piers Morgan a kicking on Good Morning Britain. If that doesn’t improve her poll ratings, nothing will. Most of the country has long been praying for a saviour to rise from these streets and knock him off his perch.
Poor Piers. He just can’t get over the fact that Meghan Markle never followed him on Twitter, even when he was in full Megfest toady mode. Nor can he stand it that Laurence Fox has stolen his thunder as this week’s go-to bloke for making an arse of himself. So although only this week Morgan had promised not to bring up Meghan and Harry again, he couldn’t resist the opportunity for more self-harm. Any attention is better than none. Like Boris Johnson, his greatest fear is being forgotten.
There was nothing at all racist about any of the royal media coverage, he said, reverting to rant auto-pilot. And he was fed up with professional PC wokes like Nandy saying it was. It was just that Meghan was a jumped-up, ungrateful LA princess who didn’t know her place and had disrespected Her Maj. Worse still, she had disrespected him. Which was unforgivable. And if she were ever to follow him on Twitter, he would make a point of blocking her. So what did Nandy have to say about that?
Initially not much, as she had been under the impression she was on the show to discuss the Labour leadership. But recovering her poise, she first pointed out she had never said that all the coverage was racist, and then asked him “How on earth would you know?” about the prejudice people of colour experienced. Maybe it might be a good idea to keep quiet for once and listen to what they were saying. Piers turned puce and terminated the interview as soon as indecently possible.
Over in the Commons, most Labour MPs were praying for Nandy – or someone like her – to take on Boris at prime minister’s questions. Anyone but Jeremy Corbyn would do, in fact, as he has already been airbrushed out of history. By himself just as much as by everyone else. Only his irrelevance is now visible. Even at its best, PMQs is a marginal spectator sport – a weekly rallying cry for the parliamentary troops: now it’s a near total irrelevance.
There was a time when Boris might at least have spent 30 minutes preparing for PMQs. That’s as close as he ever gets to due diligence. Now though, he just swans in, straight out of bed, and wings it. He can’t even be bothered to hide his contempt for Corbyn and parliament. He’s in charge and can do what he likes.
The Labour leader began by asking a perfectly reasonable question about the take-home pay of workers on universal credit. Boris clearly didn’t have a clue, but rather than go through the niceties of bullshitting, merely said that Corbyn should try asking different questions.
It got worse as Boris all but started talking over the Labour leader. No, he wasn’t going to change universal credit because it had been very effective in streamlining some people into death, with Iain Duncan Smith as undertaker-in-chief. Labour just had to shut up and get used to its futility. It should save its breath instead of whining about poor people and child refugees. Nobody cared.
“Answer the question,” Corbyn begged plaintively. Boris merely sneered. Why should he? Talk to the hand. He ended by just repeating a few lazy lies about 40 hospitals and 50,000 nurses that he doesn’t even believe himself.
This was Johnson at his very worst. Both boorish and bored. As if he’s only happy when there’s some edge and he’s on the verge of self-destruction. After all, it’s not just Labour that’s supine. The Tory benches are stuffed with nonentities too.
Boris occasionally tried to sound interested in something a backbencher had to say, but he’s a man who can’t conceal his insincerity. Not least when being served up a pathetic softball from someone like Alex Chalk. The voters of Cheltenham must already be regretting re-electing him. The only thing to vaguely disconcert Boris was Tory MP Caroline Nokes asking him “to pull out his plunger”.
Just to underline the utter pointlessness of PMQs, Johnson left the chamber to troll the nation by tweeting that he would be having his own Facebook People’s PMQs later in the afternoon. Send in your questions, he said. And some people did. Several wanted to know where the Russia report was, and how many children he had. Strangely these questions didn’t come up. The only ones to make the cut were from a D Cummings of Chillingham Castle.
What if the EU chose to play hardball? “It’s not going to happen,” Boris insisted, moving on. All fish would be given UK passports. He used blue shampoo. He was 1,000% committed to the Union. No one was going to die ever. And so on. You’d get more sense out of the first draft of a Liz Truss speech.
Throughout the 15 minutes of narcissistic indulgence, Boris’s hands moved alarmingly. It looked suspiciously as if he was playing with himself. He was certainly playing with the country. Just a month after the election, he’s already taking us all for fools. Perhaps we are.
