Don’t mock Big Tech around Rishi Sunak

PMQs began with Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite trick. He read out a sob-story intended to humiliate the government. Having outlined the woes of two unfortunate citizens, he accused Rishi Sunak of ‘refusing to take responsibility’ and of ‘boasting that everything is fine’.

The sad pawns in this prank were a teenage boy and his hard-working mother. Sir Keir even named them in the house. The young lad doesn’t go to school and his mum struggles to look after him while maintaining her job in the NHS. The pair get no help. They have no friends or neighbours, apparently. No colleagues, no relatives and no teachers to give them support. There isn’t even a boyfriend or a husband to share the load. Clearly this is an extreme case of helplessness and isolation, and their circumstances are unlikely to be improved by publicity. But Sir Keir seemed not to care either way. He quoted the mother who, rather helpfully, uses sentences that seem well suited to a Labour brochure.