Keir Starmer came to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) with a spring in his step. He announced that he owned ‘a rare unsigned copy’ of Liz Truss’s memoirs. ‘The only unsigned copy,’ he added with a chortle. Then he asked Rishi Sunak to justify the calamities of Truss’s premiership.
‘He should spend less time reading that book,’ said Rishi, ‘and a bit more time reading the deputy leader’s tax advice.’ That scuppered Sir Keir’s day in parliament. To wriggle out of trouble he played the class war card, and he accused Rishi, ‘a billionaire prime minister’, of ‘smearing a working-class woman.’
Rishi deserves great credit as a witty, fleet-footed Commons performer.
A Labour backbencher tried another Truss-related ambush and asked the PM to name Liz’s greatest achievement. Rishi was ready. He praised her work as foreign secretary signing a series of trade agreements that turned the UK into the world’s fourth largest exporter. No one saw that coming.
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