PMQs: Starmer and Sunak argue over who has the bigger racism problem

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was less about Rishi Sunak and more about the Tories around him. Keir Starmer opened his attack by describing the Conservatives as ‘the political wing of the flat earth society’. He said that ‘Tory MPs spent last week claiming that Britain is run by a shadowy cabal made up of activists, the deep state and most chillingly of all, the Financial Times’.

Starmer’s second question referenced Liz Truss directly, but the first question was clearly designed to take in Lee Anderson’s comments about Sadiq Khan handing control of London to Islamists. His argument on both was that the Tories weren’t serious about governing any more, and Sunak wasn’t strong enough to whip them into shape – or, as Starmer demanded in the case of Truss – remove the whip.

Sunak’s rejoinder was one we hear regularly from both party leaders: your racism/prejudice/general party discipline problem is worse than mine. He told the Labour leader that he had ‘sat there while anti-Semitism ran rife in his party and not once, but twice, backed a man who called Hamas his friends’. He added that while the shadow chancellor, the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow foreign secretary had refused to back Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer had and this meant he was ‘spineless, hopeless, utterly shameless’. Starmer carried on complaining that Sunak was ‘too weak to do anything about it’.

The two men continued to trade insults like teenagers comparing their puny arms in a gym mirror: Sunak had suspended his MP quicker than Starmer had with his Rochdale candidate, Starmer had campaigned for Corbyn, Sunak’s party wanted to welcome Nigel Farage back into the Tory fold. The only positive note that Sunak was able to strike about his own party was that it is remarkably better at diversity than Labour, despite all the preaching being on the other side. He reminded the chamber that the Conservatives had elected ‘the first Jewish Prime Minister, the first female Prime Minister, the first black Chancellor, the first Muslim Home Secretary and now led by the first British Asian Prime Minister’. He added that Starmer can ‘only champion men from North London: it’s the Conservatives who represent modern Britain’. It is a point that always cuts deep with Labour.

Starmer had a good line that he should use more: ‘The truth is these are no longer the Tories your parents voted for and the public can see it.’ It is a good mockery, too, of Sunak’s brief flirtation with being the ‘change candidate’ at the next election.

The Prime Minister’s personnel problems cropped up again later when Angela Eagle took issue with Sunak refusing to comment on the latest allegations against Post Office chief executive Nick Read. She added: ‘And yet he allows his Trade Secretary [Kemi Badenoch] to comment freely, loudly and often on Twitter. Is he content with her activities and behaviour in this respect?’ Sunak said Badenoch had set out her position ‘explicitly and clearly in the House last week’. He echoed a line put out by Badenoch’s team last night that the government was trying to focus on delivering compensation for those ‘who have suffered a historic injustice’ and introducing legislation to right the wrong too. Clearly the government is trying to move on from what has become a slanging match – not dissimilar to PMQs.