BOWING OUT: Starmer on his last day as PM in the Commons

That great historian, journalist, and academic Peter Hennessy is bowing out from his crossbench perch in the House of Lords. He has Parkinson’s and feels that he owes himself and his family a rest.

It is not just the wretched illness which has influenced his decision but also the rancour now corroding our politics. As a sort of farewell last Sunday, Radio 4 ran a 30-minute programme he made called Decency Politics in which he looked back at gentler times in Westminster and beyond when there was no Reform, no Farage and no Corbyn.

And when the Mail and the Telegraph were fair and decent newspapers rather than their present guise of attack dogs for the far right (short memories indeed).

It might have been little coincidence that his half-hour came four days before Keir Starmer’s final PMQs when Decency Politics made a rare and welcome return to the Commons.

Kemi Badenoch, all smiles, was charming and paid genuine tribute to the outgoing PM; he, in return, spoke of the barbed exchanges they had over the despatch box but revealed that in private she had been a kind and thoughtful colleague and opponent. I don’t doubt it.

In Hennessy’s programme, John Major talked of the decency of Neil Kinnock; he in return was clearly moved and admitted that he “could never really lay a glove on him”.

Hennessy was also the propagator of the Good Chaps theory on which our unwritten constitution relies. It depends on ministers and senior civil servants accepting that, though there is nothing enforceable because there is nothing written, there are limits to their powers and in the event of overstepping those boundaries, they know when to resign.

Wishful thinking we might think, though Lord Carrington immediately resigned after Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982 because the Foreign Office should have known. He went even though no fault could be laid on him.

There must be several (hopefully many) Good Chaps in politics today though I can think of few. I believe Badenoch to be one, probably Ed Davey and Starmer himself. Rishi Sunak for sure, former Tory minister Andrew Mitchell certainly, and maybe even Danny Kruger who looks more like he regrets defecting to Reform as each day passes. Maybe the blessed Count Binface is one too.  

Politics rules our lives so it shouldn’t be so tribal. No party has a monopoly on good ideas so there must be a case for more cross-party co-operation. It works well in the all-party select committees so why not extend the principle?

Sadly it has taken a resignation forced by Starmer’s own MPs and a death by murder, to bring MPs together to reveal their humanity.  The appalling killing of Ann Widdecombe is the supreme case. Few agreed with her sincerely-held principles but they admired her for refusing to budge on them.

There were moving tributes to her both in the House and in the media. Andrew Pierce, normally a right-wing standard bearer in the Mail and on GB News, wrote a brilliant piece on his friendship with “My darling pal the Saintly Widders” despite her being adamantly against his homosexuality and gay marriage. Pierce is in a long-term civil partnership. It mattered not a jot, they were lifelong friends who spoke almost every day.

So too, former MP Harvey Proctor in The Times who wrote that when he was falsely accused under Operation Midland by the appalling fantasist Carl Beech, she stuck fast to him when other colleagues ran for the hills

We need more Good Chaps in politics, not cheeky chappies and chancers like Boris Johnson and Farage.

*****

My item on corruption last week has drawn correspondence from my friend Jim Kirby, the Sage of Hazelbury Bryan. He tells me that the wider meaning of corruption goes far beyond just money.

It is “degradation, physical breakdown, putrefaction, returning to a state of being rotten, plus of course the subversion of society’s rules, the lingering death of the entire state and systemic decay”.

The perfect description of Trump.

***** 

My three grandsons spent last Saturday at Thorpe Park and had a wonderful, scary time on all those upside-down rides. It’s not cheap to be frightened these days. Including car park, entrance and fast passes to jump the hour-long queues it cost a total of £340.

I mentioned this to my friend Christopher Sampson who said the Jeremy Thorpe Park is better value. Free to enter, you get buggered by an old Etonian with visions of No 10 against a background of 1970s’ Liberal values. Best not to bring a dog.  

ALAN FRAME

16 July 2026