The Pope Is Dead But At Least We Have Keir To Believe In – Guido Fawkes

The PM began as the best slapstick does with a sublime loftiness. “May his Holiness rest in peace,” he said, practically giving his congregation that crook-fingered blessing. He was away in the clouds, with his international equals, attended by cherubim. 

The madness has come early, it will be worth watching out for. 

A self-identifying toad from the backbenches had just asked us to join together in praise of the PM’s “calm, pragmatic attitude”. After watching the pragmatic prime ministerial pratfalls, they could hardly muster a croak of support.

It was a test for Kemi as much as Keir. This is her killing ground. She has a reputation for standing up on trans crimes and misdemeanours, and probably the only thing everyone knows about Keir is that he gave an actual percentage for the number of women who have a penis (on his formula, 4 million worldwide).

We have a British prime minister suffering from an ideological supremacy so extreme that he could deny a two-billion-year-old fact of human reproduction. He was so much a prisoner of his profession that he believed courts had the power of transubstantiating sex.

It will never be better for Kemi. Everything was in her favour. 

Did she eviscerate his arguments, expose his delusions, denounce his treatment of Rosie Duffield? She had a go, as she does, helped by everything we know about her opponent.

The PM’s responses began confidently, calmly, pragmatically: “I think it’s now time to lower the temperature,” (some pious croaking from behind him). He felt it was important “to conduct the debate with the care and compassion that it deserves (sic).”

He followed up with some of the most disgraceful despatch box capering your sketch writer has ever seen. 

“I’ve always approached this on the basis that we should treat everyone with respect.”

 What level of fiction that fits into is hard to establish. It’s not exactly a lie while having nothing of the truth about it. 

Making a shot at goal, he cautioned against using the issue as a political football. He brought up Rishi Sunak’s “trans jokes while the mother of a murdered trans teenager watched from the public gallery.” That was deft. And evidence of longterm thinking – having sneaked the grieving mother into PMQs, to use her over a year later. And Rishi’s joke was poor, it’s true (Keir had U-turned on trans “but to be fair it was only 99 per cent of a U-turn”).

But moving into a more detailed iteration of his position on the female penis he itemised Kemi’s failure to get a US trade deal, the 2,000% increase in mixed sex wards, and her failure to save British Steel. 

And as for women’s penises – what about Robert Jenrick doing a deal with Reform? That’s what she should be worried about because the party wants him to be the leader, and he’s determined to bring this coalition with Reform together one way or another and every Tory voter is appalled at the thought of paying for the NHS! 

As for females with penises, there was record violence against women and girls under the Conservatives. Rape prosecutions were at record lows, millions of women on waiting lists while as for females with penises under the Labour Government waiting lists were down by more than 200,000. And maternity pay was strengthened which, he said, she calls excessive.

He finished in a genuinely unanswerable way peaking with – NHS charging, a pro-Russia foreign policy, and “just as the last government lost control of the economy, the borders and health, in six short months, she’s lost control of her party.” 

He sat, amid backbench croaking and the foxing, mocking laughter of Reform’s leader high in the opposite benches. 

Keir failed but Kemi only semi-succeeded. She asked the PM to “apologise” (such a losing parliamentary trope). Her questions landed on statements like, “Isn’t it because he was scared?” And, “How can we take him seriously?” And (excuse me) “He hasn’t got the balls.”

She isn’t learning. 

And who was that, bobbing in the backbenches facing the PM? Why, it was Rosie Duffield – reviled, despised, shredded by the calm, respectful pragmatism of Labour’s compassionate, dignity-bestowing leadership. She will be perhaps the only parliamentarian to come out of it all with any real credit.