It’s not unusual for a Labour leader to attack the government over the NHS at Prime Minister’s Questions. Neither is it a topic of low salience at the moment, given the size of the backlog. But it was nonetheless Sir Keir Starmer’s subject choice today was curious because it was precisely what Boris Johnson wanted to talk about, rather than the things he is trying to move on from. It’s ‘health week’ in the Downing Street grid, and apparently in Starmer’s too.
Starmer did not make these points well. Far from pointing out the Tories’ own goals, he allowed them to score a few more
To be fair to the Labour leader, he clearly hoped that his questions to Johnson would show health week up for being a bunch of gimmicky announcements that will do little to address the crisis the NHS is in at present. Currently, people are having to resort to crowdfunders in order to pay for private treatment while waiting an unacceptably long time for the NHS to get to them.
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