Prime Minister’s Questions took a rather bizarre twist this afternoon when the Labour leader ended up demanding Boris Johnson apologise to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Prime Minister reportedly complained to Tory MPs last night about Justin Welby’s criticism of the government’s Rwanda asylum policy. Sources at the meeting said Johnson had claimed Welby was ‘less vociferous’ about Vladimir Putin than he had about this policy – something the Church of England has already condemned as a ‘disgraceful slur’. Johnson did not apologise, instead saying:
I was slightly taken aback for the government to be criticised over the policy that we have devised to end the deaths at sea in the Channel as a result of cruel criminal gangs. I was surprised that we were attacked for that and actually Mr Speaker, do you know who proposed that policy first of all in 2004? It was David Blunkett, Mr Speaker.
The fundamental problem for Johnson is that his ‘getting on with the job’ line is hardly a long-term way of getting out of trouble
Starmer once questioned the Prime Minister over his character. He opened by asking why Allegra Stratton had resigned as Johnson’s press secretary, then followed this up by listing others, including Professor Neil Ferguson and Matt Hancock, who resigned over lockdown breaches, while Johnson had not. ‘Why does the Prime Minister think that everybody else’s actions have consequences – except his own?’
Johnson stuck to his ‘regret’ and apology for the fixed penalty notice, before insisting that ‘we are going to get on with delivering for the British people’. He stuck to this refrain for the rest of Starmer’s questions – and whenever opposition MPs upbraided him too – elaborating on it by claiming they were fixing the ‘damage’ caused by Labour not investing in nuclear power (conveniently eliding the 12 years of Conservative government that failed to invest in nuclear either).
The reason the character attack works is that Johnson has no ‘well-you’re-as-bad-as-me’ rejoinder to Starmer. Instead, he is left reminding the chamber that Starmer was part of the Labour frontbench that tried to elect Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, producing a new memorable line: Starmer is just a ‘Corbynista in an Islington suit’. It’s not clear what an ‘Islington suit’ is, but given Johnson lived in a very nice house in that part of London for many years, he’s more likely to know than anyone else. Starmer was also able to point out that ‘Mr Corbyn doesn’t have the whip’.
But the Labour leader did slightly lose his way after the question about apologising to the Archbishop, alleging that Johnson had criticised the BBC’s coverage of Ukraine and that he should apologise. Johnson insisted he hadn’t been criticising the BBC’s work in Ukraine – saying ‘he must be out of his tiny mind!’ Later in a point of order Tory MP David Evennett said he had been at the meeting and that Starmer had misled the house with his claims about what Johnson had said about the BBC and Ukraine.
The fundamental problem for Johnson, though, is that his ‘getting on with the job’ line is hardly a long-term way of getting out of trouble. With inflation at 7 per cent, an energy crisis that cannot be fixed quickly, and an NHS backlog that is leaving sick people waiting too long for treatment, it’s hard to see what ‘job’ the government is going to get done in time for the next election – or how voters will overlook the Prime Minister’s personal failings in favour of a party they think they can trust on the economy. It’s not clear that the last bit of that sentence is something voters will really believe when they go to the polls.
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