QUENTIN LETTS: The Deputy PM - the one with the fraud conviction - started jabbering under fire. Maybe her Tory rival reminded her of a courtroom barrister

Published: 10:56 EDT, 4 November 2026 | Updated: 11:05 EDT, 4 November 2026 What a mouse. Louise Haigh was making her debut deputising for Andy Burnham at PMQs. She’s that one with the criminal record. She was sacked from the Starmer Cabinet two years ago and then plotted to insert Mr Burnham – a man of Christian forgiveness when it comes to fraud convictions – as Prime Minister.Would she crack her knuckles at the despatch box and show flashes of nonchalant menace? Would she be streetwise, deploying an artful dodger’s repartee? Alas not. First Secretary Haigh turned in a disappointingly tinny performance. She was so softly spoken that in the tumult of the chamber she was hard to hear. A credit to the probation services, you might suspect, but a letdown in terms of parliamentary theatre. She was not a patch on Angela Rayner. Former deputy PM Rayner sat on the front bench and stayed almost entirely immobile.Miss Haigh arrived in the chamber accompanied by the Chancellor, John Healey, who hovered alongside in the manner of a solicitor guarding his young client. Miss Haigh clutched her red ministerial file. Looked a bit Uncle Dick.First question was a donkey-drop from Matthew Patrick (Lab, Wirral W). He asked about jobs for youngsters. There was a melancholy background to this, for the youthful Mr Patrick was recently sacked as a Northern Ireland minister. He had done nothing wrong. Just wasn’t part of Andy’s gang. As he spoke about it being ‘the very mission of our party’ to give young people opportunities, he did well not to break down in sobs. Would Louise Haigh be streetwise, deploying an artful dodger’s repartee? Alas not. The First Secretary turned in a tinny performance at yesterday's PMQs, writes Quentin LettsKemi Badenoch has given up letting her B-list colleagues take turns at PMQs. The task has been entrusted full-time to Alex Burghart and he was well at home – more so than the quivering Miss Haigh. A short first jab: ‘This year, how much will the Government spend on working-age welfare?’ Brief questions are always deadly.In any decent crime drama, hardened moll Louise would have knocked posh boy Burghart’s lights out before rifling in his pockets and swaggering off to the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel with her ill-gotten gains. That is how we scriptwriters would have injected some drama, I tell ye. But it was not to be.After essaying a joke about Mr Burghart’s duties as Kemi’s sidekick – it won sparse laughter from her own side – she whimpered something about how the Government was ‘committed to bringing the benefits bill down’. Labour MPs looked glum.Mr Burghart pursued his questions with impressive calm. Miss Haigh did not like it and she started jabbering. Maybe he reminded her of a courtroom barrister.Soon Burghart was poking fun at the Government’s ten-year plan. Miss Haigh insisted the Government really would cut benefits but ‘in a Labour way’. Great laughter at that. The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, told off a backbench Tory for heckling. ‘I don’t think it looks good trying to shout a woman down,’ averred the Speaker. This was a novel ruling. Many female frontbenchers, including Mrs Badenoch, have been shouted at in the Commons. Had avuncular Sir Lindsay spotted that Miss Haigh was struggling?A delegation from the Ivory Coast watched from upstairs. Sir Lindsay, not one of life’s natural linguists, announced the presence of these VIPs and tried to say ‘Cote d’Ivoire’. It popped out wrongly and sounded more like a bottle of plonk from the Co-op.There is one splendid development to report. Earlier this week I noted the lumpy, male-style suit worn by Government Chief Whip Anneliese Midgley. I suggested she smarten up and start wearing a pinstripe. And she has! She looked tons better. All it now needs is for her to adopt a Tommy gun and a stogy and Labour MPs will do precisely what she orders.Miss Haigh’s ordeal continued. She showed little relish for the fray. At the end, Mrs Rayner just shot her the shortest of nods. When Ange did PMQs there was always incident, laughter and a sense of impetus. Little of that was evident this time.