There was time for Kemi to embarrass herself again as she explained how we were both at war and not at war.
Taxi for Kemi. It's only a matter of time before Tory MPs start thinking the unthinkable and hand their leader her P45. It could be happening even now. This week's prime minister's questions can only have concentrated a few minds. Buyer's remorse has long since passed. Some have now moved through the five stages of grief.
First there was the denial. Despite evidence to the contrary, Kemi was doing better than expected. It didn't matter that she had taken the Tories from the high 20s to the mid-teens in the opinion polls. She was destined for stardom. It was just a matter of the country keeping up with her brilliance.
One day soon she would show her genius and lead the Conservatives to the promised land. Just look. On some days when Keir Starmer was having a really bad day, Kemi had got the better of him at PMQs. Who could ask for any more than that?
Then there was the anger. The realisation that Kemi wasn't all that much after all. That they had voted themselves another dud. There just hadn't been anyone noticeably better.
Next the bargaining. Did they really have to go through all this again. Maybe if they all tried to be better people then Kemi might prove herself to be at least an adequate stopgap before they could agree on anyone better. Then the depression. This was their reality and they were stuck with it.
Finally, just a few MPs have made it through to the other side of acceptance. If not an entirely happy place, then a place where they were more or less at peace. They could admit their mistakes, try to move her on, and move on. They wanted to be kind, if at all possible. Avoid any humiliation. But all thinktanks had rejected her. Mainly because she can't think. Not on her feet. Not when sitting down.
All that was left was to hire her out to Spurs. Tottenham are on course to churn their way through at least four more managers this season on their last-chance power drive to relegation. And Kemi is the undisputed queen of self-destruction. Surely she could take over for one game. Lead Tottenham to a 5-0 home defeat to Brighton. It would be no worse than Igor Tudor. And her name would liveth for ever more in N17.
This week's PMQs could just have been Kemi's worst ever. A low bar. Worse even than last week when she was truly dreadful. Because on Wednesday she didn’t just show she was tin-eared. She showed that she’s not that bright. Mainly because she imagines herself to be an accomplished performer. Someone with all the details at her fingertips. A clever person knows their limitations. Kemi believes she has none.
Kemi began with a half-witted question. Why did the prime minister want to increase the price of petrol? Quite apart from the fact Keir Starmer had done nothing to indicate that he did, it gave him the opportunity to point out the essential absurdity of Kemi’s position on the war. All along, it had been his aim to de-escalate the situation. To not join in with the US and Israel, and to only allow UK bases and forces to be used in defensive operations.
Meanwhile, Kemi has never yet come across a war in which she doesn't want to play an active part. It would be a dream come true for her to be allowed on a bombing mission. Only last week she had been criticising Starmer for not having allowed Donald Trump to do whatever he wanted. For being a coward.
Then on Tuesday, Kemi had given an interview to the BBC in which she insisted that she had never said the things everyone had heard her say. The whole country had suffered an audio malfunction. Because when she had said she was all for the war, what she had really meant was that she was fully behind the prime minister’s decision to take a back seat. Anyone who disagreed with her was a liar. And how dare anyone suggest she had misread the mood of the country by thinking Trump was a reliable ally?
"This is the mother of all U-turns," said Starmer.
A bit of a cheek from someone who has done more U-turns in the last 18 months or so than any prime minister in history. There again, maybe U-turning on a war is a different category. A higher order U-turn.
If Kemi or Nigel Farage had been prime minister, we'd have found ourselves bombing Iran on day one of the war. Only for a week later to send a letter of apology to the Ayatollah. "You know that war we started against you. Well, we've decided we made a bit of a mistake. Got carried away by The Donald. So can we pretend those bombs we dropped on you never really happened?"
There was just time for Kemi to embarrass herself one last time as she tried to explain how we were both at war and not at war at the same time. Schödinger's war. "I would have sent HMS Dragon to the Gulf a week ago," Kemi said defiantly. Brilliant. In which case she would have sent a boat that was neither seaworthy nor stocked with the right defensive munitions for engagement. Presumably, her master plan was to send HMS Dragon to scuttle itself in the Strait of Hormuz. The ultimate act of futility. Much like Kemi's performance at PMQs.
Later in the afternoon, cabinet minister Darren Jones gave a statement on the release of the first tranche of the Peter Mandelson files. A great deal was much as we already knew. That Starmer had made a massive error of judgment in even contemplating giving Mandy a job as ambassador to the US. The links with Epstein were well known.
In reply, shadow minister Alex Burghart made much of Mandelson's severance payment of £75k, despite Jones's explanation that was probably the least the government would have got away with. Mandy meanwhile had been holding out for more than £550k. I have my dignity to think of, he had wailed. Only that ship had sailed decades ago.