Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick both decided not to turn up to a vote on whether Keir Starmer should face a parliamentary investigation.
On Tuesday evening, MPs voted against a Conservative-led motion which called for the prime minister to face an inquiry over claims he misled the Commons about Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador.
MPs rejected the motion by 335 votes to 223. Only 14 Labour MPs voted in favour of the motion, which sought to have Starmer’s remarks assessed by the cross-party committee responsible for looking into cases of MPs breaking parliamentary rules.
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Had an inquiry found that the PM did mislead the House, it could have led to Starmer’s resignation.
You might expect then that Starmer and the government’s biggest critics would be desperate to show up for the vote.
Well, it seems not.
Reform leader Nigel Farage and Reform MP Robert Jenrick clearly decided the debate wasn’t worth their time, as neither turned up to vote on the motion.
This was despite the fact the Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf had issued a threatening message the day before to MPs thinking of voting against the motion.
As Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell pointed out on social media, clearly the vote wasn’t that important for Reform’s two most senior figures.
The Tories also took aim at Farage and Jenrick for missing the vote, accusing them of ‘letting Starmer off the hook.’