Prime Minister’s Questions opened with Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson agreeing that the anonymous briefing about Angela Rayner was unacceptable. The Labour leader speculated that Johnson would have ‘whipped his backbenchers to scream and shout – and that’s fine’, before demanding that he send a ‘clear message that there’s no place for sexism or misogyny’.
Johnson has been consistent on this point, rushing to distance himself from the story as soon as it emerged. It has, though, sparked a wider debate about sexism in misogyny in parliament which is likely to dominate the agenda into next week too: on which more below. Starmer’s questions, though, were dominated by the cost of living; he chose to drop partygate for the time being so he could grill Johnson on the economy. The Labour leader pointed out that Britain’s growth was set to be the slowest in the G7, asking why the Prime Minister was ‘failing to manage the economy’.
Outside the chamber, though, an almighty row is taking off
The exchanges stayed on this topic, with Johnson trying to claim that he was fixing mistakes made by the previous Labour government, despite the memories of that administration being rather distant. The Prime Minister claimed the energy security strategy, for instance, would ‘undo the mistakes of previous Labour governments’, even though the Tories have had 12 years to rectify those mistakes. Only now is Johnson able to claim, as he did today, that the government would build ‘a nuclear reactor every year and not a nuclear reactor every decade’ – impressive only if you believe that future intentions are the same as concrete achievements (on that basis everyone who embarks on a diet loses five stone on the first day and Del Boy didn’t need to wait until this time next year to be a millionaire).
The PM was also back with his well-trodden lines, such as ‘if we’d listened to him we’d never have come out of lockdown’. Starmer ridiculed them, saying: ‘These must be the Oxford Union debating skills we’ve heard so much about. Failing to answer the question, rambling incoherently, throwing in garbled metaphors. Powerful stuff, Prime Minister.’ He described Johnson as the ‘Comical Ali of the cost of living crisis,’ of being an ‘ostrich’ about how hard things were for households, and of policies to cut costs which ‘made the Cones Hotline seem visionary’.
The Labour leader’s own solution was once again a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, which is doing a lot of heavy lifting for Labour at the moment when it comes to justifying spending demands.
Outside the chamber, though, an almighty row is taking off, with a Tory MP alleged to have watched pornography in the House of Commons. It came too late for PMQs, though Green MP Caroline Lucas did get a commitment from the PM that sexual harassment was a resigning matter under the Ministerial Code (relevant given the report that three members of Johnson’s own cabinet are facing investigations). Voters often overlook appalling behaviour in a governing party if they feel the government is getting on with making their lives better. The danger for Johnson is that few people will be feeling that now or in the run-up to the next election, and so will feel that the Conservatives have been partying and doing far worse instead of focusing on their real priorities.
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