Four things we learned from the PM’s Liaison Committee meeting

The remarkable thing about today’s Liaison Committee is how unremarkable it was. During the ninety-minute session with the chairmen of the House of Commons’ select committees, the contrast with Boris Johnson’s box office battles could not have been clearer. Sunak sought to conciliate, downplay and comfort at every turn, seeking to offer warm words and switching his focus between the macro and the micro: matching MPs on specifics to assure them he was across the detail while taking difficult questions back to his first principles.

Child refugees? We have to stop the boats. If Northern Ireland is in the single market, why not Scotland? The 2014 vote remains in force. NHS pay? There will be funds – but we must halve inflation. It represented the wider approach which Sunak and Starmer are taking to politics in seeking a return to normalcy. Most of the Labour chairmen demanded more funding; most of the Tories asked technical questions.