Neither Keir Starmer nor Rishi Sunak were very good at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though Starmer didn’t get his own job title wrong this time, he did still speak as though he was the leader of the opposition attacking the Conservatives in government, rather like he’s the guy in charge. Sunak decided to punch the bruise on the winter fuel payment and then make a handbrake turn to British farming, which left the Prime Minister a little discombobulated, as he clearly hadn’t prepared anything on that subject. But he was unable to talk about one of the biggest issues of the week, which was the mass early release of prisoners, because he knew that trying to scrutinise the government on this would just lead to the Conservatives being blamed all the more.
In Westminster, ‘really important’ is a way of saying you either don’t know what someone is going on about
Sunak first demanded that the government publish the impact assessment on the winter fuel payment. Starmer didn’t answer that question at all, listing the failures of the Conservative party and merely saying that ‘of course when it comes to mitigations and impacts, we’ve put those in place’. His payoff was: ‘But before he complains about us clearing up his mess, perhaps he’d like to apologise for the £22 billion black hole!’
The Leader of the Opposition gave it another go, saying starkly: ‘he’s the one that’s taking money away from pensioners on £13,000!’ Sunak then claimed that the Chancellor had admitted that she wouldn’t mind if this policy didn’t save any money. Rachel Reeves, sitting on the front bench wearing a large scarf to protect her against the cold, looked totally horrified.
Sunak asked again: ‘why won’t he publish the assessment now?’ And again Starmer went back to his attacks on the Conservatives, rather than answering the question. When he was on the opposition benches, Starmer would make a real point of highlighting when prime ministers, particularly Boris Johnson, didn’t answer the question – he may find that Sunak’s successor points that out too.
Sunak homed in on the impact assessment still further, asking whether the numbers in it on how many deaths could be caused by the removal of the payment were higher or lower than the Labour party’s own previously analysis which had suggested it could cause 3,850 deaths. Starmer didn’t answer that question, either.
The Prime Minister was clearly ready to avoid answering the next three questions on the winter fuel payment too. But Sunak swiftly moved to Back British Farming Day, something Starmer clearly hadn’t expected to have to talk about. He didn’t really answer the question about enshrining a national food security target in law, just saying it was ‘really important’. In Westminster, ‘really important’ is a way of saying you either don’t know what someone is going on about, or that you haven’t bothered to read all the way through their long-winded book or piece but you want to sound like you have. He then added that rural issues are ‘really important’ too. They’re very important to the Conservatives, too, because they lost a lot of their rural voters at the last election, which is why Sunak was suddenly tacking from pensioners to farmers.
There were a number of notable backbench questions, including Nigel Farage’s one on two-tier policing. This didn’t work as well as the Reform UK leader might have hoped, because his question had been preceded by one from the Southport MP Patrick Hurley, who was talking about the support for the town after the murder of three little girls this summer. Starmer had pointed out in response to Hurley that the police had been attacked, so the mood wasn’t quite right for Farage when he stood up.
The Prime Minister was also keen to look ahead to Lord Darzi’s report on the NHS, which is due out tomorrow. That will be another opportunity to attack the Conservatives, and maybe not answer the questions being asked in that report about what the new government will actually do.
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