Yesterday Keir Starmer was his usual self, knowledgable, patient with childlike behaviour, and cutting to the truth.
But I found Rachel Reeves (Shadow Chancellor), came up with all I could want and I wasn't the only one to notice. Paul Waugh, in his Huffpost email, was full of praise for the double act.
Starmer made all the right points. He cannily picked up on the fact that Johnson’s new plan would not only breach his manifesto pledges on tax, but it would also even breach his manifesto pledge on social care.
He did comment that it lacked drama. Something I think many of us have been hoping for and not seen. But then came Rachel Reeves. After a lack-lustre performance from Jesse Norman who tried to convince the Tory MPs that black is white and that this was very much a Tory policy in she stepped.
She used the soundbites Johnson et all are so well known for. When talking about the NHS and care workers she shouted over the Tories “last year the public clapped them, this year the Tories taxed them”. My heart began to lift a little.
Shouting successfully over the Tory pantomime she called out “this unfair, job taxing, manifesto-shredding, tax bombshell”. This sounded like politics, sometimes condemned, but in this instance getting over what many have seen to be the case.
She even did a "Johnson" and had the Labour MPs yelling ‘No!’ after a string of questions on the government's plan’s flaws, one of which had been handed to her by Sajid Javid’s blustering meets with the media: “Will it clear the NHS backlog this parliament? No! called back the opposition "And the health secretary says no.” she carefully added.
Great though it was to see the heart back in the LP she also filled out a little of what Starmer had hinted at re the Labour Party Plans. Starmer's agreement with ex-Chancellor Osbourne's "those with the broadest shoulders" widened out to "those who get their income from financial assets, stocks and shares, sales of property, pension income, annuity income, interest income, property rental income, inheritance income". As Paul Waugh noted, this list may be long enough to raise the money needed and do away with this iniquitous levy.
Those who are left or left-leaning please watch this speech. It may be a landmark; at the very least it will raise your spirits I think.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000zkst/house-of-commons-08092021 - 08/09/2021 at about 1:15:10 in.