Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer needs to answer the question

Keir Starmer at PMQs

Neither Keir Starmer nor Rishi Sunak were very good at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though Starmer didn’t get his own job title wrong this time, he did still speak as though he was the leader of the opposition attacking the Conservatives in government, rather like he’s the guy in charge. Sunak decided to punch the bruise on the winter fuel payment and then make a handbrake turn to British farming, which left the Prime Minister a little discombobulated, as he clearly hadn’t prepared anything on that subject. But he was unable to talk about one of the biggest issues of the week, which was the mass early release of prisoners, because he knew that trying to scrutinise the government on this would just lead to the Conservatives being blamed all the more.

In Westminster, ‘really important’ is a way of saying you either don’t know what someone is going on about

Sunak first demanded that the government publish the impact assessment on the winter fuel payment.

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