QUENTIN LETTS: The day before Starmer's Commons tantrum, the Speaker sent the PM packing when he tried to overturn protocol at a grand Westminster funeral

By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER 15:57 16 Apr 2026, updated 15:58 16 Apr 2026

After Wednesday’s dramas it was a relief to find Sir Lindsay Hoyle in the Chair for Thursday’s business. Indeed, the Speaker was in a jocular mood after his row with the Prime Minister. He sported no black eye. Was not even wearing a crash helmet. Nerves of steel. Sir Lindsay is a match for any of those chaps who used to do the Cresta Run in a bobble hat.

From the press gallery we craned to see if his throne had been splintered by Sir Keir’s flailing blows. Readers will recall that the PM came over all unnecessary after Sir Lindsay told him to stop evading questions from Kemi Badenoch.

So batey did the booby become that he whacked an arm-rest of the Speaker’s chair. His adenoids were parping like a South African football fan’s vuvuzela. In a tantrum he turns into Sooty’s Sweep.

Wednesday was not the first time this week No 10 tried to impose its will on the Speaker. On Tuesday both men attended St Margaret’s, Westminster, for the funeral of former Labour MP Phil Woolas.

It was a big do. Sir Tony Blair spoke well, as did Gordon Brown. Andy Burnham was there, modestly taking a pew in the south aisle. Protocol dictated that Sir Keir be among later arrivals but that Sir Lindsay would enter last. Sir Keir’s people tried to alter that time-honoured ceremonial procedure.

They told Sir Lindsay and his entourage to go first, as that would leave Sir Keir to make the final grand entry. Speaker Hoyle was having none of it. Sir Keir was briskly told to remember his station in life and take his pew forthwith.

Phil Woolas belonged to a different Labour party from that of Sir Keir. Phil was a Northerner. He enjoyed life. Had a quick wit and little time for London-lawyer careerists. St Margaret’s was packed with his grieving friends.

Afterwards, as the bells tolled and eyes were dried, the church-steps talk was of Blair and Brown and Speaker Lindsay with his train bearer and Serjeant at Arms. No one gave the nasal knight the time of day. And off he scuttled to Downing Street, unmarked, unmissed.

At Thursday’s business questions the Shadow Leader of the Commons, Jesse Norman, dwelt at some length on Sir Keir’s bad behaviour in and after PMQs. Mr Norman had done some research. He had found that of the 24 responses given by Sir Keir to Mrs Badenoch in the last month, no fewer than 23 ‘ignored the question and changed the subject’. What with that and the display of petulance at the Speaker’s Chair, said Mr Norman, the Prime Minister should write a letter of apology to Sir Lindsay.

Mr Norman reflected that in the last week, in golf, Rory McIlroy showed the best of sport – ‘an honest man facing his demons and triumphing’. He regretted that the same could not be said for our friend Sooty.

Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the House, responded that it was hardly novel for prime ministers to find ways of not giving answers the Opposition wished to hear. This was neatly put but it was not lost on the Commons that Sir Alan did not try to defend Sir Keir’s loss of temper.

Even the most loyal ministers must know that Wednesday’s events, particularly the slapping of the Speaker’s Chair, looked brittle. It was the behaviour of a prime minister who has lost command and is now seeking to blame others – the Tories, Trump, the Speaker, even his chair – for his own inadequacy.

In the House of Lords there were more calls for No 10 to publish its defence investment plan. Defence minister Lord Coaker, good bloke, did his best but there was no disguising his unease.

Lord Stirrup, former chief of the defence staff, was withering. ‘The people of this country have a right to expect their leaders to, well, lead,’ he said. Our prime minister is friendless. It is an extraordinary state of affairs.