Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer exposed Boris’s chaos and confusion at PMQs

(Credit: Parliament TV)

Boris Johnson and his ministers are inching ever closer to U-turning on a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies. Today the Prime Minister refused to rule out such a tax, telling Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer that ‘we will look at all the measures’ possible to tackle the cost of living crisis. Starmer retorted that the U-turn was now ‘inevitable’ and that the Prime Minister should just get on with it. Such is the extent of the government’s chaos and confusion on this matter that the Prime Minister spent much of PMQs answering questions about why he wasn’t adopting a variety of Labour measures including this tax and an emergency budget. 

Starmer quipped that Jacob Rees-Mogg was leaving notes on civil service desks ‘like an overgrown prefect’

As well as saying the government was considering all measures, Johnson appeared to prepare the ground for a tax by arguing that the reason these companies are in such a strong position was the sound economic management of his own party.

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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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