Will Sunak or Starmer ever say anything new at PMQs?

Rishi Sunak will have been grateful to have got through Prime Minister’s Questions today with little criticism – at least from his own side. The session opened with a loyal planted question on the inflation figures, which allowed Sunak to tell the Commons that ‘our plan is working’ and underline that this was the steepest fall since the 1980s. 

Once that was over, the session then descended into a pretty run-of-the-mill grudge match between Sunak and Keir Starmer, with the latter listing things that weren’t working and asking why the Prime Minister wasn’t calling an election. Sunak’s responses contained some minor developments in his attacks on Starmer for defending Hizb ut-Tahrir. Other than that, though, you could have placed this session at any point over the past three months and not been sure what date it was. The same may well prove true for the next three months too.

The Labour leader’s first question ran thus: ‘Violent prisoners released early because the Tories wrecked the criminal justice system.