Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions clash between Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson focused on the domestic implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Labour leader started by calling on Johnson to force Chancellor Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on his policy of a £200 loan to help with energy prices.
Starmer’s argument was that this loan had been developed on the assumption that prices were going to fall, but Ukraine had changed that. Johnson argued that Starmer would be ‘absolutely out of his mind’ to be arguing that the Chancellor should U-turn on the help he was already offering. That wasn’t what Starmer was saying: he was arguing that the ‘help’ would actually cause more pain because people would be required to pay back the loan when they were struggling even more with their bills. ‘We will see how long that position lasts,’ he retorted.
Starmer also asked for a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, accusing the Prime Minister of ‘protecting energy profits, not working people’. He also expressed theatrical astonishment with the Prime Minister as he ridiculed Labour for changing tack on nuclear power and for refusing, as he claimed, to invest in nuclear. ‘Oh come off it!’ he expostulated. ‘Labour is pro-nuclear. This Prime Minister can’t get a single brick laid of a new nuclear plant!’
These exchanges were designed to show that the government doesn’t have a plan for coping with the cost of living. ‘Britain can’t afford another crisis like this,’ Starmer argued. It is indeed going to be a very uncomfortable year for the Conservatives as the cost of living goes up and up. But the more immediately politically awkward exchanges came later and were on refugees. SNP leader Ian Blackford started the complaints on the matter, accusing Priti Patel of incompetence and of presiding over one of the worst responses in Europe.
Johnson’s answer sounded very pre-written, starting with the line that ‘everybody sympathises with the plight of refugees: this government wants to do everything we can’. He then ignored Blackford’s second question in which he accused Patel of blocking people fleeing war crimes ‘with endless paperwork’, and claimed, to some jeering from the opposition benches, that this government has an unparalleled record on refugees.
He made this assertion once again when he found himself being questioned by someone rather more politically potent: not Blackford, who tends to unite the Tories in derision, but former Chief Whip and Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith, who asked:
I commend the Prime Minister’s response to this Ukrainian crisis, but I think people across the country are genuinely concerned on our response on refugees, on the bureaucracy, on the tone of our response. He has shown with vaccines that government change really comes from the very top. Please can I urge him to look again on resetting our policy and taking control of a more humane approach to those women and men fleeing from Ukraine.
Johnson was initially defensive, referring Smith to his answer to Blackford, before adding:
I think there is a huge opportunity now for us to do more, which is why my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up will be setting out a route by which the British people, not just the family reunion route which can run into the hundreds of thousands, but also a route by which everybody in this country can offer a home to people fleeing Ukraine…
Though he was insistent that the UK government is out in front on refugees, that response suggests the Prime Minister hasn’t overlooked the worries Smith set out. Indeed he would, to use his own language, be ‘absolutely out of his mind’ if he did so.
The solution, it seems, is to use Michael Gove to clear up another ministerial mess, something he has made a career out of. But as Smith pointed out, government successes come from the top, and they tend to be successes because the person at the very top knows what their policy is. Today’s session didn’t give us much reassurance on that.
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