Sunak’s ‘Sir Softy’ attack on Starmer flopped at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than Rishi Sunak today. The main reason for this was that the Labour leader had come with a clear thesis about the Tories breaking public services and Sunak not noticing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had brought along a bizarre insult for his opponent. While Starmer ridiculed the claim by Conservative party chair Greg Hands that public services are in ‘good shape’, Sunak derided the opposition leader as ‘Sir Softy’. At one point he claimed ‘that’s why they call him Sir Softy’ – even though ‘they’ could only possibly refer to the aides he had been preparing for the session with, and even though Sir Softy sounds more like the name for an ice cream van than someone voters might reject at the ballot box. 

Much like a child trying to work out whether the ice cream was going to come down their street next, Sunak was also not entirely sure where Sir Softy was going with his questions.