PMQs - Snap verdict
Andrew Sparrow
Sir Keir Starmer gave
an interview to the Guardian today that was interpreted by us, and others, as indicating a hardening of his stance against the government - less consensus-seeking, more condemnatory. Obviously in normal circumstances the Guardian is never wrong, but on the basis of what happened at PMQs today it is not clear that anything much has changed. At PMQs Starmer has consistently presented himself as the most reasonable person at the despatch box (more on that
here, including why it worked for another opposition leader) and today he won the “talking sense” competition quite comfortably.
It wasn’t as if the questions were, on their own, especially memorable. But Starmer does tend to specialise in loaded questions to which there is no safe or easy answer (‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ questions, as I think they are known at the bar), and Johnson has yet to develop any plausible response mechanism. At their last PMQs he tried responding with promises (the “world-beating” test and trace system). We had a flash of that from Johnson at PMQs later, when he pledged to ensure all test results are turned around with 24 hours by the end of the month (see
12.19pm - there may well be some clarification of quite what this involves at the lobby briefing later) but mostly, in his exchanges with Starmer, Johnson resorted to criticising the opposition leader for - well, opposing the government. He accused Starmer of launching “endless attacks on public trust and confidence” and of “casting aspersions” on the good character of people working on test and trace (some of whom are spending much of their time watching Netflix because they don’t have enough to do, if Sky is to be believed).
This is a lame form of parliamentary defence at the best times. But given that the PM is facing criticism for not even doing his own job properly (see
9.37am), it was unwise to invest so much in attacking Starmer for doing his.