Keir Starmer shames the House - PMQs should be referred to Trading Standards

It was left to speaker Lindsay Hoyle - a Labour man himself - to give us everything we needed to know about this week's Prime Minister's Questions when he wearily told the House: "Let's listen to the answer even if you don't believe you're getting one." And indeed it really is time to refer PMQs to Trading Standards officers because it should correctly be renamed Prime Minister's Evasions.

Starmer simply refuses to answer the questions of the Leader of the Opposition. Now, PMQs has always been replete with weasel words and political feints and deflections - this Prime Minister is different, he simply flatly refuses to answer a straight question. Oh, except the embarrassingly planted and stage-managed questions from his own side of course... which he always responds to with a giveaway "I'm glad my Right Honourable Friend has asked me that..." before telling us how milk, honey and unicorns are just around the corner.

And if all that adds up to any sort of democratic accountability I'm a banana.

Starmer shames the house.

And frankly that takes some doing.

Interestingly those hacks and MPs who lingered a minute or so following the final whistle of this week's PMQs would have witnessed Shadow Leader of the House Jesse Norman putting forward a point of order, highlighting Starmer's utter contempt for the political norms of British democracy.

Norman said: "This House and the viewing public have just been treated to the very unfortunate spectacle of a Prime Minister who is completely unwilling to answer questions from the Leader of the Opposition.

"So much so that he completely changes the subject.

"Could you give us some guidance as to whether you may be able to correct answers when they are wildly inappropriate."

Poor Lindsay could only shrug and bluster "I'm not responsible for the answers given by ministers," but you rather suspected the RHM for Chorley, a rigorous Parliamentarian rather wished he was.

Starmer's contempt for the democratic Parliamentary process - oh, and by extension that's contempt for you and me - was jaw-dropping.

Is jaw-dropping. He was blasted by Norman (and an incandescent Lindsay Hoyle) earlier this week for releasing Britain's nuclear defence strategy to journalists and Govan dockers before he told elected MPs.

Today Kemi Badenoch, admittedly two weeks too late, asked a crystal clear opening question at PMQs about Starmer's U-turn on winter fuel payments asking "how many will get it back?"

The Prime Minister ignored the question and started banging on about the triple lock, which of course Badenoch had never mentioned.

Her next question - a very important one to millions of families - was simply "will the Government keep the two-child benefit cap?"

Starmer refused to answer but blathered-on about driving down child poverty. Er, which he could do by lifting the benefit cap. But I guess we'll never know.

Third up, Kemi rather surprised herself with an actually quite brilliant question simply asking the millionaire socialist what he truly believed in.

Sir Kier immediately referred to his notes, prepared no doubt by Morgan McSweeney, to check what it was he actually did truly believe in, this week.

The humour was not lost on the house and nor should it have been on the nation.

Elsewhere the hammy, panto-style, audience plant, brown-nosing from Starmer's own MPs continued to act as an insult to democracy and all of us voters.

Does he really take us for mugs?

Of course he does.

You could see some of his hapless placemen visibly wince as they spat out parts of their own integrity with the scripted questions.

Most awful was perhaps Graeme Downie (Lab Dunfermline and Dollar). I may not have caught his words exactly but I think they were "just how marvellous are you Mr Starmer and just how many amazing things will the Labour Party do in Scotland?"

Gosh one would never imagine there was Scottish Parliamentary by-election for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency tomorrow.

PMQ's should be, and indeed used to be, a cornerstone of Britain's Parliamentary accountability.

Today it is lies, damned lies and Starmer's evasion.