When Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, he and Keir Starmer had some of the most repetitive and uninformative sessions at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today was his final stint as leader of the opposition in this forum, and the session was charming. It covered the coast-to-coast route, which travels through his Richmond constituency, the importance of cricket in schools, AI and tolerance. Even the question covering the thorniest topic, Northern Ireland, was polite: Sunak merely pointed out that it was a special part of the UK which required great care, and asked Starmer not to neglect it. The Prime Minister agreed.
Starmer paid tribute to Sunak’s service, hard work and decency, while nodding to the fact that the pair had disagreed and argued at some length. He also wished Sunak a happy Diwali. The pair enjoyed a few jokes, one about the possibility that Starmer might join him on the coast-to-coast walk, and another about the need for the PM to ‘embrace his inner tech bro’ (a reference to Starmer accidentally calling Sunak a ‘tech brother’) on artificial intelligence.
When a leader is leaving, they often try to talk about what they achieved in the job. Today, the exchanges between the two men largely felt like a list of things the outgoing leader of the opposition found personally interesting, rather than any real attempt to tell the Commons what he thought was his legacy.
Starmer had his chance later to talk about the Conservative legacy when he answered questions from backbenchers, though he largely stayed focused on Liz Truss, rather than Sunak. The Prime Minister pointed out that Truss has been making approving noises about Jeremy Hunt’s ‘attacks on the independent Office for Budget Responsibility’. This is a bit of a misinterpretation of what the shadow chancellor has been trying to do: Hunt has been complaining that the government is trying to politicise the OBR, rather than sharing Truss’s vendetta against the watchdog itself.
Starmer also poked both Tory leadership candidates with his answer to Richard Tice on whether more information should be made available to the public on terrorism incidents. Starmer said: ‘All of us in this House have a choice to make, including both candidates to be the next Tory leader – they can either support the police in their difficult task, or they can undermine the police in their difficult task. I know which side I am on.’ He might not mention Sunak that much from now on as he prepares to face either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick as the new Conservative leader. But he’ll probably still be talking about Truss long after the next leader has moved on, too.
Comments