Another week, another Prime Minister’s Questions featuring Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak arguing across the Commons. Except, of course, the men had swapped sides, with Starmer taking his first session as prime minister, and they were – possibly for the first time ever – quite nice to each other. All the old grudge match lines had gone. There were plenty of references to how civil they were being to each other, plenty of ‘I’m glad to hear the prime minister’ and ‘I will reach out across this House’.
Sunak focused all his questions on Ukraine and international affairs, which made it much easier for the two men to be pleasant. The Leader of the Opposition had an opening joke about Team GB at the Olympics, saying: ‘I’m probably not the first person they want to hear advice from on how to win’. He then asked about the government’s support for Ukraine, and whether he would ‘continue to be responsive to Ukraine’s requests’. His second question elaborated on this, pressing Starmer on the use of long-range missiles against Russia. He slowly widened his points out to the Tempest fighter jet programme, asking ‘could the Prime Minister confirm that he will continue those initial positive conversations with Saudi Arabia, and he can be assured he will have our full support in doing so’.
His final question was the most interesting. It was about the importance of a prime minister using their prerogative power to take military action, sometimes without asking the Commons. He asked Starmer to agree with that: ‘I agree it’s essential and our security is the first duty of government.‘ He added: ‘As I mentioned to him last week, I will endeavour to ensure that we will proceed in the same way.’ The reason Sunak was asking this was that at one point Starmer had proposed enshrining in law the requirement for the Commons to approve military action. The Prime Minister didn’t go into enough detail on that in his answer, but it will be a flashpoint with his own party when one of these moments arises, which they always do during a premiership.
The session then became mildly more political. When Ed Davey asked his questions as leader of the third largest party, Starmer attracted some jeers and cheers when he claimed that the financial situation had turned out to be worse than expected when Labour came into government. When Davey asked about social care, Starmer replied that this is ‘not the only crisis’, and repeated his spiel about Tory failure. He then offered the kind of cross-party unity that MPs should run a million miles from, by hinting that he will indeed be setting up cross-party talks on social care reform, something that sounds lovely but which has repeatedly failed to deliver actual reform over the past few decades because the parties all have different first principles and will never really agree.
Stephen Flynn has been demoted from the leader of the third largest party, and had a self-deprecatory chuckle about the impact of the Labour victory on SNP numbers when he asked his question. He wanted to know about the two-child benefit cap, and Starmer offered a list of all the things the government was doing to drive down child poverty. Flynn’s colleague Pete Wishart followed this up a couple of minutes later, saying ‘the headlines are awful’, and asking whether ‘his honeymoon is over before it had even begun’. Starmer ridiculed him for losing so many colleagues in the election, and elicited a cheer when he said he was proud of the Scottish Labour MPs on the benches around him.
Starmer will be content with today’s PMQs, probably the easiest one he will ever have to face
There were a few questions from the Labour backbenches laying down a marker about key policies, but none of them were actively hostile. Nadia Whittome, one of the MPs who has expressed concerns about the cap but who did not rebel last night, asked about the government’s approach to transgender teenagers. Starmer said he would be proceeding sensitively, and would not be creating ideological dividing lines. Another Labour backbencher, Mohammad Yasin, pressed him on a ceasefire in Gaza, to which he replied that he and the Foreign Secretary had been clear that they wanted an immediate end to the fighting.
The Prime Minister continued to talk about Tory chaos, mentioning the problems in prisons, and telling newly-elected Reform MP Rupert Lowe that the Conservatives had ‘lost control of our borders’. Until the Conservatives have a swinging new leader, this session on a Wednesday lunchtime will be one of Starmer’s key opportunities for baking in the narrative that the Tories broke Britain.
Starmer will be content with today’s PMQs, probably the easiest one he will ever have to face. His party was enjoying the moment of cheering on a Labour prime minister, rather than sitting on the opposition benches. Anything else would have been extremely weird given the size of the majority Labour has won and given the number of Labour MPs who are delighted to be at PMQs for the first time. But questions will become more hostile soon. Given how much longer Sunak has left to slog away at his opposition job before the Conservatives pick a new leader, the chances are that the first hostility will come from behind Starmer, rather than opposite him.
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