How happy Oliver Dowden looked! He has helped prepare Tory leaders since Michael Howard for PMQs, and here he was, as Deputy Prime Minister since 21st April, at long last delivering the lines himself.
Rishi Sunak had departed for the G7 meeting in Japan, and Angela Rayner was standing in for Sir Keir Starmer.
Here was Dowden’s half hour of fame, and he opened with an expertly crafted joke:
“It is a pleasure to see the Right Honourable Lady here today. I was though expecting to face the Labour Leader’s choice for the next Deputy Prime Minister, if they win the election, so I’m surprised the Lib Dem Leader isn’t facing questions today.”
Tory backbenchers found that most amusing, even though it entailed the admission that Labour might win.
Dowden went on to suggest that although Starmer and Rayner pretend to get on, they are actually “at each other’s throats. Mr Speaker, they’re the Phil and Holly of British politics.”
This too went down well with Tory backbenchers, at least half of whom know who Phil and Holly are.
Rayner herself looked happy to have half an hour in the limelight, but had over-prepared, for her questions grew longer and longer.
The ideal question at PMQs is so short and pointed that an evasive reply is rendered conspicuous: the PM or DPM has been given minimal time to think and cannot just respond to whichever part of some long, meandering enquiry offers the best opportunity for counter-attack.
Rayner tried to embarrass Dowden by quoting figures for hospital waiting lists, child poverty and food banks.
Dowden pointed out that there has been a pandemic, quoted different figures, and said “this comprehensive school boy is not going to take any lessons from the party opposite”.
It is, in fact, quite difficult to teach Dowden a lesson, in the sense of demonstrating that one knows more than he does about some political issue, for as noted in his ConHome profile, he is “a professional man of government”, with a deep knowledge of how the official machine works.
Mhairi Black, standing in for the SNP leader Stephen Flynn and not sounding nearly so eloquent, invited Dowden to “admit that Brexit has failed”, an invitation he declined.
At the end of PMQs, Dowden worked in a reference to his “many happy family holidays in Wales”, and looked just as cheerful as he had at the start.