Today’s Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions was a particularly low-rent affair. Andrew Griffith was the Tory sent out to question David Lammy while Keir Starmer is in China. The shadow business secretary didn’t do a particularly good job: perhaps he had assumed that Lammy would have another disastrous session like he did when a prisoner was accidentally released last autumn.

The Deputy Prime Minister was unflappable today though, and clearly enjoyed himself, while Griffith sounded like he was at a departmental questions session, not the set-piece political event of the week. Lammy ended up joking that ‘he’s not going to get this gig again’, and he was probably right. 

The Deputy Prime Minister had plenty of jokes prepared, including one in response to an early question from a Labour backbencher about a rubbish dump. This allowed him to say:

Speaking of garbage, I note Reform’s spring cleaning of the party........

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