Penny Mordaunt’s ‘Beach Ken’ jibe at ‘zero balls’ Starmer shows politics just got (even) lower

Flinging insults like tennis balls over a parliamentary net – our politicians are becoming increasingly potty-mouthed, writes Sean O’Grady

Penny Mordaunt made a glorious Barbie jibe, branding Starmer ‘Beach Ken: Zero Balls’ (Getty Images)

Starmer started it with his “Inaction Man” dig at Sunak – and now Penny Mordaunt has responded with a glorious Barbie jibe, branding Starmer “Beach Ken: zero balls”.

It’s not the first time Mordaunt has made a phallic reference for a joke – she once used the word “c**k*” in a Commons debate six times as part of a Royal Navy forfeit. What’s more, the Tory London mayor candidate Susan Hall has added to the potty-mouthed politican humour bandwagon, by giving the thumbs up to a tweet branding Sadiq Khan “the nipple height mayor”.

The odd thing about the current vogue for name-calling in politics isn’t so much that it’s rude, childish and generally demeaning for all concerned – though it certainly is all of those things – but that the names just don’t stick (or, they hope they don’t).

Such may prove the case with Hapless Hall (how’s that for a nickname?), who has liked tweets – or exes as we might now call them – about Enoch Powell, as well as the one about Khan. The Powellite tweet added that “it’s never too late to save your country”, which is maybe not the sort of message that sits well in multicultural London, or even in today’s crackpot Conservative Party.

A spokesperson for Hairdresser Hall (that’s not an insult, because she does in fact run a salon) has issued an unconvincing rebuttal, which it’s only fair to quote in the circumstances: “Susan engages with many people on Twitter without endorsing their views.”

Well, you could say that. Or you can have your next mayor of London with a dash of racism. That’s democracy I suppose.

No one expects our current crop of politicians to inspire us with their Socratic discourse, but can it really be that our prime minister and his vast squad of acolytes could come up with nothing better to throw at Starmer than “Sir Softie”?

I think it must have been inspired by some Beano-reading researcher who thinks that the leader of the opposition resembles Walter the softy. But Sunak is no Dennis the Menace, and Oliver Dowden is nowhere near as fearsome as Gnasher.

In return – because schoolyard name-calling begets more schoolyard name-calling – Starmer deployed the slightly more blistering “Inaction Man” at Sunak. This is better, because it captures the essence of complacency and cluelessness that has come to characterise Sunak’s fag end government, but it doesn’t quite work because everyone knows that prime ministers – even the laziest and most incompetent – spend their days making decisions and taking action (albeit not always effectively). Like Sunak, Starmer needs some better joke writers.

Even the relatively successful labels that politicians try to stick on one another tend not to pass the test of time. We do all remember, I think, Boris Johnson teasing Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions with the moniker “Captain Hindsight”, but even that has been pretty much forgotten, unused by Johnson’s successors. Perhaps that was because, hindsight or not, Starmer was obviously proved right about Johnson’s behaviour during the Covid lockdowns: Rule number one of name-calling is that it doesn’t rebound back on you.

It’s sometimes said that the insult “Mad Nads”, aimed at Nadine Dorries during her early parliamentary career, was dreamed up by David Cameron and George Osborne. It’s not that inventive – indeed it’s pretty obvious, and feels a little misogynistic – and that’s why it makes one feel a little uncomfortable in quoting it.

Someone else – quite possibly Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel – came up with the slogan “Go Nads!” for reasons now forgotten, but that sticks quite well and of course capture the essential ballsiness of the loud-mouthed former MP for Mid-Bedfordshire.

Much the same may be said of “30p Lee”, which some unnamed hero on Twitter came up with for Lee Anderson, the Tory politician with a flair for publicity who claims that we don’t need that many food banks because anyone can make a nutritious meal from scratch for 30 pence a portion.

For its sheer lyricism I’ve always had a liking for another of Boris Johnson’s put downs of Starmer: “Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest”, which was deployed tragically late in Johnson’s time as premier. By that point, the crashing bore he was referring to had got the measure of flashy Johnson and helped ease him out of the House of Commons. Crashed his dreams, you might say.

Starmer was never quite witty enough to invent a good nickname for Johnson. Turns out he didn’t need to, because Johnson was perfectly well able to make a fool of himself without the need for assistance.

The moral being, therefore, that if you can’t come up with that rare gem – a blistering schoolboy jibe – you ought not to even try.