Sir Keir Starmer will have spent far more time preparing his response to today’s Budget which comes after Prime Minister’s Questions, but he did also manage to highlight a problem that isn’t going away for the government in his questions to Boris Johnson. The Labour leader chose to focus his stint on Yemen, criticising the British government’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the decision to cut international aid money to the war-torn country.
Johnson insisted that ‘when it comes to the people of Yemen, we continue to step up to the plate’. The most instructive question was on whether MPs will get a vote on the cuts to aid. Starmer quoted concerns from the UN Secretary-General, as well as senior Conservative MPs including former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell. He then asked:
Johnson complained that Starmer ‘can’t work out what his priorities are’
‘Britain should be a moral force for good in the world, but just as the US is stepping up, the UK is stepping back.
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