It’s one of the oldest and corniest of all political jokes. And there were groans as well as laughs when Kama Sutra Keir taunted Kemi Badenoch with it in the Commons.
Mocking the Tories for changing prime ministers and other top posts, the PM declared in an attempt at raunchy humour: “They had more positions in 14 years than the Kama Sutra.”
For those who don’t know, the Kama Sutra is an ancient Hindu guide on sex positions, the art of love and spirituality. Erotic, its supporters claim. Smutty, according to prudes.
But if Sir Keir turning the air blue sounded familiar, that’s because it is. It’s a dreadful joke that’s been cracked 33 times by senior politicians in parliament in recent years, according to Hansard.
It’s been used by the Conservatives against Sir Keir himself, by former Tory leaders Sir Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague against Tony Blair and by ex-deputy PM Sir Nick Clegg against his Tory coalition partner George Osborne.
Most recently, it was used last July by then-Commons leader Lucy Powell, now Labour’s deputy leader, against her Tory shadow, the posh Etonian Jesse Norman.
In a virtually identical taunt about Tory U-turns to that employed by Sir Keir to Mrs Badenoch, Ms Powell said: “In 14 years they have had more positions than the Kama Sutra.”
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But in 2021, Tory chair Amanda Milling mocked Sir Keir: “He points different ways depending on which day it is, changing position more often than the Kama Sutra to chase headlines and play politics.”
A year earlier, in the 2020 Commons Brexit wars, Remainer Tom Tugendhat told MPs wearily: “After years of acrimony and anger, it is time to end the constitutional Kama Sutra.”
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In 2013, when he was a coalition minister, Sir Vince Cable mocked Labour’s Ed Balls, telling MPs: “The shadow chancellor has had more positions on the economy than there are positions in the Kama Sutra.”
Back in 2008, before they sat in David Cameron’s cabinet together, Clegg used the jibe against Osborne about the Northern Rock banking crisis in his Lib Dem conference speech, claiming: “George Osborne has had more positions than the Kama Sutra.”
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In 2005, by then no longer Tory leader, IDS goaded Blair at PMQs: “The prime minister has been against Europe and then for it. He has been for the pound and then against it. He has been against a referendum and then for it.
“The prime minister has taken more positions than the Kama Sutra.”
Later on the same day, Hague, his predecessor as Tory leader, followed up: “I believe the prime minister is now on his seventh policy in 18 months on the question of holding a referendum on the European constitution.
“(He) compared it at Prime Minister’s Questions to the Kama Sutra, but even with all the prime minister’s skills of ambiguity, his endemic contortions and U-turns, he is not quite in that category.”
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Other current MPs who have recited the gag in parliament include Labour’s Peter Dowd and Tory George Freeman. Peers include the distinguished lawyers Lords Pannick and Lester of Herne Hill.
It’s such an old joke, and it divides opinion. Some reports claimed the attempt by Kama Sutra Keir at bawdy humour had MPs in hysterics. Others claimed it flopped.
They do say that when it comes to jokes, the old ones are the best. Not the Kama Sutra joke, however.
