Never has PMQs felt so like the ending of a feel-good movie. The return of Craig Mackinlay (Con, South Thanet), who walked into the Chamber on bionic feet and raised bionic arms to his family sitting in the gallery, was greeted with a standing ovation on both sides of the House.
All sombre topics, and the election rumours sweeping Westminster, were for a few moments forgotten. What a miracle that eight months after Mackinlay lay in a coma with sepsis, was given a five per cent chance of survival, and had both hands and feet amputated, he could return like this, and at length take his place on the front bench below the gangway.
Sir Keir Starmer entered, unusually, from the far end of the Chamber so he could stop, congratulate Mackinlay and shake his bionic hand.
At the end of PMQs, the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, called Mackinlay, who apologised for having caused an outbreak of clapping, which is against the rules, and wearing no jacket, as it would not fit over his bionic arm.
Mackinlay revealed that when the Speaker visited him in hospital, people knew he must be dreadfully ill, for they said to each other: “That guy’s got the funeral director in already.”
Starmer at the start of PMQs said to Mackinlay: “Thank you for meeting me privately this morning with your wife and daughter so I could personally convey my best wishes to all of you.”
After this gracious sentiment, Starmer added that “on some occasions, and there aren’t many” – he gave a rueful laugh – “this House genuinely comes together as one.”
The Leader of the Opposition speaks for a united Parliament and nation! “I want to acknowledge,” he told Mackinlay, “your deep sense of service – I think that politics is about service.” An echo there of John Smith.
This statesmanlike tone was continued through all six of his questions to Rishi Sunak, which were about the Infected Blood Inquiry and the need for “the duty of candour” to “apply to all public servants across the board”.
Sunak replied that it would “take time to fully digest” the report, but he had “an enormous amount of sympathy” for that view.
Starmer said “the very culture of the NHS needs to change”. Can it be that he has been reading ConHome? There certainly seems to be no limit to the number of small-c conservative things he is prepared to say in the run-up to the general election.
No word of when that election will be, but much speculation in the press gallery on this topic, with older and wiser heads suggesting a cabinet reshuffle is more likely.