PMQs: Starmer’s caution is getting the better of him

The clash of styles continued at PMQs today. Keir Starmer came with a set of detailed questions and Boris Johnson attempted to push him back with a sheer weight of rhetoric.

Johnson’s approach isn’t particularly edifying but it does deny Starmer the opportunity to land many blows in these sessions. The Labour leader hasn’t quite worked out how to adapt to Johnson’s tactics. He finds himself vulnerable as the Tory leader changes the subject, as he did today effectively to ding Starmer on schools.

Starmer used his last question to come back on an answer the Prime Minister gave last week on child poverty. Starmer accused Johnson of giving ‘dodgy answers’. I suspect that this is an approach Starmer will use more and more, revisiting Johnson’s answers from the previous week; it suits his cautious nature. But the problem for the Labour leader is that it doesn’t produce quite the same political frisson a week late.