Close your eyes in today’s Liaison Committee hearing and you might have thought Rishi Sunak was still prime minister. Keir Starmer clearly shares his predecessor’s enthusiasm for this end-of-term parliamentary ritual. His smile was broad and his hands flurried as he relished the chance to show off his knowledge in front of two dozen select committee chairs.
Gone are the days of the Boris Johnson era when such exchanges were characterised by mutual loathing. Such was Labour’s performance in July’s general election that the party now boasts two thirds of the select committee chairs. The likes of Meg Hillier and Liam Byrne were robust, but hardly intimidating, as Starmer handled with ease their respective questions on expenditure and business. Others were even more deferential: Tan Dhesi, the defence chairman, began his question by thanking the Prime Minister ‘for your service to this nation.’
His ‘je ne regrette rien’ will become increasingly implausible
The fact that Starmer has only been PM for five months helped him in this session too. Some lines of inquiry – such as that from Tory Caroline Dinenage on AI copyright – could be dead-batted with reference to ongoing consultations. Other difficult questions could be palmed off, plausibly, on the grounds that Labour’s policies need more time to bear fruit. Florence Eshalomi, the housing chair, asked if Starmer was confident his 1.5 million new homes target will be hit. The PM acknowledged it was ‘difficult’ but that he believes his government can do it. With each successive session, he may find that an increasingly difficult line to sustain.
The most uncomfortable exchange for Starmer was that with Alistair Carmichael, the rural affairs chair. This was unsurprising: both given the subject matter and because of Carmichael’s long parliamentary experience on committees like foreign affairs. But Starmer did not help himself with a glib reply to Carmichael’s request for a meeting between the chancellor and the National Farmers’ Union (NFU). Upon responding that he was not in charge of Rachel Reeves’s diary, it was left to Carmichael to note how his government’s tax changes had reduced the NFU president to tears.
As time goes on, and the committee chairs hear more from the Prime Minister, their tolerance for stonewalling is likely to decline. Similarly, his ‘je ne regrette rien’ act of insisting that he would have not done anything differently over the last five months with the benefit of hindsight will become increasingly implausible if mistakes continue to mount. But for Starmer, today’s 90-minute session was a comfortable one – and a satisfying way to round off a challenging year.
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