Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Starmer’s prickly questions over Sunak’s wealth

[Credit: BBC]

A Labour leader opening Prime Minister’s Questions with a description of the luxurious private schooling that the Conservative Prime Minister enjoyed doesn’t sound particularly informative – or indeed relevant – to many voters. Keir Starmer’s opening question this afternoon was this: ‘Winchester College has a rowing club, a rifle club and an extensive art collection. They charge more than £45,000 a year in fees. Why did [Sunak] hand them nearly £6 million of taxpayers’ money this year in what his Levelling Up Secretary calls “egregious state support”?’

The Prime Minister has a large group of critics and rebels in his party who he just can’t seem to please



What Starmer was trying to do today was to draw together his recent policy announcement on ending the charitable status of private schools and similar noises made by senior Tories including Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove. The Labour leader wanted to paint Sunak as weak – as well as loaded – by arguing that he was too weak to do the right thing and use the millions of pounds in tax breaks enjoyed by private schools to better fund state education instead. Sunak was happy with the question, because it allowed him to attack Starmer for his own weaknesses: ‘I listen to parents and he listens to his union paymasters,’ he said, reminding the Chamber that Labour pushed to keep schools closed for longer during the pandemic. It’s worth pointing out that the teaching unions don’t have a funding relationship with Labour, but never mind that. Starmer contrasted Sunak’s alma mater with schools in Southampton, where four in every ten pupils failed their English or Maths GCSE this year. Sunak liked this question, too, as it allowed him to contrast the Tory emphasis on aspiration with Labour’s discomfort with it. ‘Whenever he attacks me about where I went to school, he is attacking the hard-working aspirations of millions of people in this country. He’s attacking people like my parents, Mr Speaker. This is a country that believes in opportunity, not resentment. He doesn’t understand that and that’s why he’s not fit to lead.’

Those first three questions suited Starmer and Sunak just fine. Labour has for the past few years thought it safer to complain about private schools given fees are becoming more and more out of reach for most aspirational families. The Tories think voters understand why you would, if you could afford it, give your child the very best start possible in life – with a rifle club presumably being a bonus. Where the balance shifted was when the Labour leader moved to the rather more difficult topic of housebuilding. Here, again, he wanted to attack Sunak as too weak to stand up to his own party. He claimed the Conservatives were ‘killing off aspiration in this country’ because the ‘dream of home ownership’ had become ‘far more remote now than it was when his party came into power 12 years ago’. He then asked how tough Sunak would get ‘with his backbenchers who are blocking the new homes this country so badly needs?’ Finally, he offered Labour’s support in defeating the amendment Theresa Villiers tabled to the Levelling Up Bill to make housing targets ‘advisory’. Sunak didn’t react to the points about his party at all, presumably because it is hard enough to engage with those backbenchers privately – let alone defend or attack them in the Chamber. Instead, he talked more about Labour frontbenchers joining picket lines and the small successes the Conservatives have enjoyed on housebuilding.

Both men said the other was weak, but Sunak had to resort to more sidestepping this week to avoid answering the questions on housebuilding. The private schools ding-dong set up the more potent housing question well, but Starmer does need to be careful that he doesn’t appear to be retreating into a Labour party comfort zone ­– moaning about the wealthy – even if his design was to paint a wider picture about Sunak’s character.

There was a more troubling question for Sunak to answer even before Starmer had got to his feet, though. Sir Paul Beresford delighted the Chamber by announcing he had just returned from the South Pacific (prompting a number of MPs to start dancing and giggling). He then reported ‘deep concern at the expanding tentacles of communist China’, adding: ‘Would my right honourable friend agree with me that China is more than just – as he’s put it – a systemic challenge, but in fact an expanding, serious geopolitical threat?’ Sunak didn’t engage on the language but listed the ways in which he felt the government was protecting the country’s national security. The fact is that he has upset some in his party by apparently downgrading the government’s stance towards China – whether that’s weak or not depends largely on your view on how to approach this world power. But it’s a reminder that, whether on domestic issues such as housing, or foreign policy, the Prime Minister has a large group of critics and rebels in his party who he just can’t seem to please.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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