SHEARING SHEEP : THE HOUSE OF COMMONS has been the scene of many a fierce exchange between equally able adversaries in its long and glorious history, and never less so than the current era.
Mr Johnson, currently pretending to be prime minister (so Mr Cummings can swing the wrecking ball behind the scenes), squared off against the fact obsessed Starmer yesterday and hit himself square between the lies.
Faced with an entirely unnecessary series of questions based in entirely unnecessary facts from Sir Starmer, Mr Johnson put his sizeable shoulder to the mental hamster wheel Cummings runs him on daily, and demanded an answer from the Leader of the Opposition.
Perhaps he mistakenly believes “PMQs” means it’s time for him to ask questions, and not answer them?
“I know the right honourable gentlemen is mired in the dogeared traditions of the past,” Mr Johnson wafted, looking anywhere but at Mr Starmer, “he seems to think that having a functioning government not led by an idiot is a benchmark of governance? And this in the age of public servants doing the work of hedge funds and billionaires? Really. Does he not realise the UK is now a billionairocracy? He is a man out of his time.”
Mr Starmer waited with the delightful air of coiled passive aggressiveness that is proving so effective against Mr Johnson. Perhaps an aura modelled on imagining what is Mr Johnson’s private nightmare? The close confidant or partner that once again has him bang to rights and is just waiting for him to trigger the trap?
“I challenge the right honourable gentleman to name one country that has a functioning prime minister?”
Mr Starmer inhaled and then exhaled the one word that is kryptonite to puffed up, pathetic, empire nostalgia freaks like Mr Johnson.
“Germany.”
Although the list that answers Mr Johnson’s ill considered question is of course, much longer. Just like the list of countries with functioning Covid-19 apps.