Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions clash between Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson focused on the domestic implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Labour leader started by calling on Johnson to force Chancellor Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on his policy of a £200 loan to help with energy prices.
Starmer’s argument was that this loan had been developed on the assumption that prices were going to fall, but Ukraine had changed that. Johnson argued that Starmer would be ‘absolutely out of his mind’ to be arguing that the Chancellor should U-turn on the help he was already offering. That wasn’t what Starmer was saying: he was arguing that the ‘help’ would actually cause more pain because people would be required to pay back the loan when they were struggling even more with their bills. ‘We will see how long that position lasts,’ he retorted.
Starmer also asked for a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, accusing the Prime Minister of ‘protecting energy profits, not working people’.
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