Prime Minister’s Questions came back with a bang today and there was one person who certainly enjoyed it.
Elon Musk, no doubt tuning in from his lair in a hollowed out volcano, must have been beside himself to see his political agenda being debated in the mother of parliaments.
“Evil” Keir Starmer being verbally duffed up by Kemi Badenoch over the grooming scandal is popcorn-worthy stuff for the world’s richest man.
And the one-man X-ing/tweeting machine was soon firing off X’s/tweets praising the Tory leader for telling the PM to be a “leader not a lawyer”.
The Tesla boss even got name-checked, by Starmer, over his apparent snub to Nigel Farage that he “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead Reform UK.
Farage took it in good spirits but he must have been seething. Reform’s Rupert Lowe, who was Musk’s flavour of the week on Sunday, chuckled.
It’s all about Kemi now.
The opposition leader’s jibe about Sir Keir’s leadership skills came as he tried to step into his old lawyery shoes during angry clashes in the Commons.
He rebuffed calls for a national inquiry into the grooming scandal, saying a new probe would only mean “delay” and even accused the Tory leader of being “short-sighted and misguided” over the issue.
But Kemi had him boxed in and the government has seemingly left the door ajar to an inquiry.
The issue has become a political storm after Musk used his social media platform to launch a barrage of attacks at Sir Keir and Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips over the past few weeks.
Phillips, sitting on the government frontbench, looked even more furious than normal as the two leaders traded blows.
Temperatures in the chamber, freezing outside, simmered.
But the agenda-setter didn’t change as the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey raised the “spectre” of Musk’s possible 100 million dollar donation to Reform UK.
Sir Keir said the Government will look at potential reforms to political party funding.
One suspects that someone who can change the British political weather with the click of a button will be able to find a way to give wads of cash to his party of choice.
