Keir Starmer fails to use the ‘Dom bombs’ at PMQs

Keir Starmer was back on his home turf at Prime Minister’s Questions today, attacking Boris Johnson for what he said was a lack of competence in containing the spread of the Delta variant. The Labour leader focused on the delay in putting India on the red list, turning one of the Prime Minister’s stock phrases against him, saying: ‘While the NHS was vaccinating, he was vacillating.’ Starmer said that if Johnson had acted quickly enough to put India on the list, ‘we wouldn’t have had the Delta variant here’, later adding: ‘The British people don’t expect miracles but they do expect basic competence and honesty.’ He asked why anyone should believe Boris Johnson given the number of times he had given assurances about getting on top of the pandemic which were soon proven terribly wrong.

Johnson’s retorts weren’t particularly striking: he placed heavy emphasis on the vaccine rollout, as usual, and complained once again that Starmer ‘can’t decide what he thinks from one week to the next.’

But this session could have been made more uncomfortable for the Prime Minister had anyone in the Chamber managed to get to the end of the lengthy blog post and tweet thread posted by his former senior aide Dominic Cummings shortly before the session. This latest dump of allegations promised to offer the evidence for much of what Cummings told the select committee hearing last month. And while crucial pieces of evidence (such as the alleged note from the Cabinet Secretary about Matt Hancock’s honesty) were missing, it could and should have been possible for Starmer or one of his backbenchers to ask the Prime Minister why he had kept in place a health secretary he had said was ‘totally fucking hopeless’ (more on that here).

As it was, the session rumbled on with complaints from SNP MPs about the Australian trade deal and worries from Tory backbenchers about the ongoing restrictions. Starmer may have found it comfortable rehashing his old competence pitch, and it may have worked this week, but he cannot keep relying on it.