PMQs Sketch: Prince Harry, avenged by the Spare red-heads
Prince Harry woke up this morning and breathed a sigh of relief: it was revenge for the red-headed Spares. Finally, his day had come.
Oliver Dowden and Angela Rayner, both ginger, both second-in-command, faced off in Prime Minister’s Questions in an almost flirtatious double act.
Rayner kicked off with a nod to Dowden political survival: “I’ve seen three deputy prime ministers in my time, but the third time’s a charm,” she said, glad to be able to crack a joke without Dominic Raab giving demented winks from the other side.
She continued with a wisecrack at Rishi Sunak’s youthful admission that all of his friends were poshos, “It’s good to see the prime minister has a working class friend, finally.”
Dowden, who has spent most of his political career preparing other leaders for these weekly stoushes with the Labour man or woman of the moment, was startled to find himself not merely rehearsing the jokes, but actually having to make them himself.
Retorting to a reminder of the last time he resigned, after the Conservatives had lost a humble 300 seats in last year’s local elections, Dowden picked apart the picture-perfect image of Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer.
“They’re the Phil and Holly of British politics,” he taunted from the despatch box.
Rayner’s approach to PMQs (or, deputy PMQs) was a kind of group therapy session, trying to get Dowden & co to take the first step of solving the problem: admitting you have one.
Almost every question, from child poverty to NHS waiting lists, was finished off with demand for Dowden to “stop blaming everyone else and admit the problem is them”.
Dowden, for all his record of preparing good jokes, met the waiting list broadside with a weak attempt at accusing Labour of kow-towing to their “union paymasters” by opposing minimum service level laws to stop strikes in the health service.
Rayner, without missing a beat, came back: “We all want minimum service levels, it’s this government that has failed to provide minimum service levels in all of our trains, in all of our public services.”
If Prince Harry was hoping to be avenged by these two unlikely candidates, Rayner and Dowden did as much for those suffering from “gingervitis”, the odd affliction discerned by the creators of South Park, as Matt Hancock did for children with dyslexia during his stint on I’m a Celebrity.