Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

If only Starmer had answered his own questions at PMQs

Keir Starmer at PMQs (Credit: Getty images)

Is Rishi Sunak going to announce the election date later today? Speculation was – once again – so rife that the Prime Minister might be about to make some kind of announcement that the question came up at Prime Minister’s Questions. And he didn’t answer it. When SNP Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn asked him, Sunak replied that there would be a general election in the second half of the year – which we already know because he cannot now call one for sooner than July anyway. 

Keir Starmer did not ask about the election. The Labour leader focused on the recommendation in this week’s infected blood inquiry report that a duty of candour be made statutory across the public sector. His opening question was whether the Prime Minister agreed that ‘we will only make real progress if we tackle the lack of openness, transparency and candour that Sir Brian Langstaff identified as having prolonged the victims’ suffering for decades?’ Sunak agreed, and said, ‘We will listen to them and ensure that nothing like this can ever happen in our country ever again’.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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