Pmqs

Keir Starmer’s unseemly performance at PMQs

It was a day of awful numbers. And even more gruesome cliches. The Labour leader started it. ‘Yesterday we passed the tragic milestone of 100,000 deaths,’ said Sir Keir Starmer. Then he informed us that, ‘this is not just a statistic.’ He explained that each dead person has connections to other individuals who remain alive. He gave three examples. ‘A mum, a dad, a sister.’ Then he gave four more. ‘A brother, a friend, a colleague, a neighbour.’ Next he premiered a well-crafted denunciation of government failings that relied on the repetition of ‘slow’ at the start of each phrase. ‘Slow, slow, slow’, he boomed, like the tolling of a

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Starmer’s opposition is strangely muted

Boris Johnson had a very difficult backdrop to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, having marked 100,000 deaths in the coronavirus pandemic last night. But, strangely, he didn’t have a particularly difficult session in the Commons. Sir Keir Starmer did, as you might expect, lead on the death toll, asking the Prime Minister repeatedly why he thought the UK had such a high death rate, and why he wouldn’t learn the lessons from the pandemic now so that the government didn’t repeat its mistakes. Johnson was able to deal with this reasonably easily, arguing that while he did think there would be a time to learn the lessons of what happened, that

Silencing Ian Blackford is one upside to PMQs tech troubles

Parliament, 0. Computer Bugs 1. That was the score at PMQs today after a software glitch turned the debate into a cyber-shambles. The disaster unfolded as Ian Blackford asked his two questions. The SNP member, wearing a smart three-piece suit, joined the chamber from his sumptuously appointed country seat in the Hebrides. Blackford is known as a champion of the people and today he had a golden opportunity to stir up trouble for Boris. The very fishermen whom the PM had promised to enrich after Brexit are facing ruin because paper-wonks at sea-ports are holding up the transit of fresh fish. A perfect issue for the SNP.  But Blackford ignored

Starmer is yet to learn the art of PMQs

Where to begin? That was one of most absorbing PMQs of recent times. Three top moments: the Speaker rebuked the PM for improper language. The Labour leader was humiliated by one of his own backbenchers. And Ian Blackford asked a good question. That’s right. It finally happened. The SNP leader in the House of Commons — the great windbag of the Western Isles — made history by raising a sensible point. The Scottish shellfish industry, he said, has been shafted by Brexit. The problem? Red-tape. Last Monday a hapless trawlerman had to watch while his £40,000 haul turned rotten on the dockside as a posse of EU form-fiddlers fretted over

Steerpike

Watch: Lindsay Hoyle ticks off Boris Johnson

A feisty exchange took place at Prime Minister’s Questions today, on the subject of free school meals, after widely-shared images showed children being provided with substandard food packages. Keir Starmer went on the attack, and suggested that the meagre meals were in line with the government’s current guidance. But it was Boris Johnson who provoked the ire of the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, after the PM suggested that Starmer’s stance on the matter was hypocritical. The remark led to the visibly angry Speaker giving Johnson a dressing down, with Hoyle calling on the PM to withdraw the remark. Watch here:

Why does Ian Blackford get a free pass at PMQs?

The Speaker was busy at PMQs. He jumped in at the start and told Michael Fabricant, the orange-haired member for Lichfield, to stop rambling and get to the point. He admonished an SNP member for addressing the Prime Minister as ‘you.’ Convention dictates that ‘you’ in the Commons means the Speaker himself. ‘You keep saying ‘you’. I’m not responsible for any of this,’ Lindsay Hoyle said. And he jokingly called Boris, ‘Father Christmas,’ after a Tory suggested that the PM was like Santa for school kids. So there seemed to be a semblance of seasonal cheer in the chamber. And then Sir Keir Starmer stood up and read out a

James Forsyth

Keir Starmer’s late criticism of Christmas easing

Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer both assumed that today was the last PMQs before Christmas, suggesting that they don’t expect Parliament to be sitting next Wednesday. Their exchanges were particularly unenlightening this week. Starmer argued that his concerns about the tier system had been justified by the fact that cases are rising in three quarters of tier 2 areas and half of tier 3. Johnson again attacked him for abstaining on the vote on the tier system. Interestingly, Starmer set himself fully against the Christmas easing calling it ‘the next big mistake’ and approvingly quoted the joint Health Service Journal / British Medical Journal editorial, which called for a ban

PMQs: Starmer lacked a forensic touch

It really is crunch time. The international game of Texas Hold’em is reaching its climax. The lesser players have folded. Only two high-rollers remain at the table. Beads of sweat are appearing on their brows. Each is feeling for a lucky charm discreetly held in a side-pocket, and each is scouring the other’s eyes for signs of fear or uncertainty. The turn of a card will determine the outcome. This is the position as Boris prepares for tonight’s summit feast with Ursula von der Leyen. At PMQs, he was confronted by Sir Keir Starmer who appeared via video-link from his Camden home. Labour’s spin-team missed a golden opportunity here. They

PMQs: Starmer lays traps with an eye to vaccine troubles

Prime Minister’s Questions didn’t feel particularly high wattage today. Sir Keir Starmer seemed to be using his questions to lay the groundwork for a future showdown with Boris Johnson. He used his first three questions to ask whether the government had done the necessary logistical planning to ensure the smooth roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine, particularly in care homes. He wanted to know who the Prime Minister expected to receive the vaccine next week, when those people in the top priority groups could expect to be vaccinated, and whether the Prime Minister had put plans in place to ensure that the vaccine really can get to care homes, given the

Have Boris and Starmer worked out each other’s weaknesses?

Sir Keir Starmer is continuing to use his Prime Minister’s Questions to build a narrative about the government’s lack of competence, particularly when it comes to awarding contracts. This has had varying impact in each session, but by returning to the matter on a weekly basis, the Labour leader is developing a theme. Today he attacked the government’s procurement process for personal protective equipment, pointing to an admission from ministers that they have purchased around 184 million items of PPE which are unusable. Johnson’s retort to this question was very similar to the way he has dealt with all the others: he suggested that Starmer was displaying a ‘deep underlying

Boris’s ‘Captain Hindsight’ attack backfires

Boris Johnson may be able to explain his U-turn on imposing a second national lockdown on England in policy terms, arguing as he did last night that he favoured trying to keep as many businesses operating as possible while taking other steps to drive down the rate of infection. But it is far harder to justify politically because of the way he conducted himself while resisting the idea of the lockdown. The Prime Minister appears to have regarded the difference between his local approach and the ‘circuit-breaker’ favoured by Sir Keir Starmer as a campaigning opportunity. Not only did the Conservative party publish a now widely-mocked tweet criticising Labour for

Boris’s PMQs performance was the perfect birthday present for Keir Starmer

It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight question’: when did Boris know ‘there was a problem’ with the algorithm used to decide A-level grades? ‘May I congratulate him on his birthday,’ said Boris – making it clear he hadn’t the foggiest what to say. The Prime Minister then started firing off random phrases in the hope that a coherent sentence might accidentally

Sir Keir Starmer’s split personality at PMQs

It’s official. The Labour party now has two leaders. Both are knights. But it’s hard to say which is the real Sir Keir Starmer. Not even Sir Keir Starmer seems to know. Good Sir Keir is the kindly, decent comrade who wants to aid his fellow man at a time of crisis. Wicked Sir Keir is the dastardly villain who plots to unhorse his foe with a poisoned lance or a hidden dagger. At PMQs he began as Good Sir Keir. He thanked Boris for extending the furlough and for voicing his opposition to racial prejudice. Then he got all dastardly. He read out a fistful of statistics proving that

PMQs: Starmer’s swipes leave Boris unbowed

Keir Starmer is a very rum package. His body and his manner seem to belong to different organisms. His physique is martial, sturdy, invincible. The square jaw, the trunk-like neck, the unsettlingly symmetrical face, the blue but eerily lifeless eyes. But his personality has no trace of manliness at all. He seems grannyish, nervy, over-delicate, like an unobtrusive footman who finds himself lord of the manor following a paternity test. There’s something about him that doesn’t ring true. His voice is like the creak of a door in a chapel of rest. But he’s an effective debater. He enjoys using statistics to inflict horrors on his opponent. Today, he unleashed

John Connolly

Keir Starmer trips up Boris Johnson at PMQs

The majority of today’s PMQs face-off between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer concerned the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in care homes, after the Office for National Statistics reported yesterday that over 8,000 care home residents have died of Covid-19 – a figure that is expected to rise in the coming weeks. Boris Johnson’s weakest moments in the session were when Starmer criticised the policy of moving elderly patients from hospitals to care homes at the beginning of the crisis, before they received a negative coronavirus test. The leader of the Labour party quoted a cardiologist who claimed that suspected coronavirus cases were discharged from hospitals into care homes

PMQs: A Commons cowed by coronavirus

Last week Britain was a free-market democracy. Now we’re living in a one-party state. The transition became clear at PMQs today where General-Secretary Johnson gave bland and reassuring replies to super-soft questions from tame MPs. The House was half empty. Members practised a sort of semi-self-isolation. They sat apart from each other by a distance of about four feet, or the width of Cyril Smith. The mood – one of hunched defiance – doesn’t suit the Commons which prefers a rowdy, combative carnival atmosphere. All political differences seem to have been cancelled. Previous sins are forgiven. Past idiocies forgotten. Jeremy Corbyn went into a U-turn on small businesses. For years

Corbyn racks up another lacklustre PMQs

If a Prime Minister’s Questions before a Budget is rather lacklustre, then this is normally easily excused as being the Leader of the Opposition not putting as much prep as usual into a session that no-one will watch. But while today’s performance from Jeremy Corbyn was indeed lacklustre, it wasn’t any different from his offerings over the past few months. The Labour leader decided to focus on the lot of women in this country, given it was International Women’s Day at the weekend. He started with what seemed a pretty reasonable opener, which was demanding sick pay for those on zero hours contracts, particularly care workers who will need to

Why were there so many loyal questions at PMQs today?

This week’s Prime Minister’s Questions had Tory MPs bursting out of their seats to ask Boris Johnson some lovely easy questions. There were more than usual whose contribution to the session was merely to ask him to agree with them that he had the right priorities and was doing a great job.  Claire Coutinho, recently-elected as Conservative MP for East Surrey, gave the Prime Minister a chance for a breather right after his stint sparring with Jeremy Corbyn with this question: ‘My constituents in East Surrey care enormously about climate change. Does my right hon. Friend agree that yesterday’s news that the UK’s carbon emissions have been reduced by a

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris bats off Priti protests

The PM defended his Home Secretary as opposition members tried to force her resignation, live on TV, at PMQs. Priti Patel, in a muted fuchsia dress, sat on the Treasury bench nestled snugly between Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Prime Minister. This casual arrangement cannot have been more deliberate. Here she is, announced the seating-plan, and here she stays. Jeremy Corbyn tried first. He demanded ‘an independent investigation into the home secretary’s conduct led by an external lawyer.’ He also wanted ‘a date when the findings will be made public.’ Boris ducked this blatantly. ‘The home secretary is keeping this country safe. She believes in stopping the early release of offenders…

Isabel Hardman

Leadsom delivers a parting shot at Bercow

Andrea Leadsom has just given a rather long and very comprehensive personal statement in the Commons following her sacking in last month’s reshuffle. She took no parting shots at Boris Johnson at all, preferring instead to focus any anger on former Speaker John Bercow, with whom she had a very long-running feud. Why did she bother giving a personal statement at all if it was just to look back on the past few years at work? Someone with very little knowledge of what has happened in Westminster in the past few years might have been forgiven for thinking that Bercow was the one responsible for her leaving government, rather than