Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Tory MPs have a strange way of showing their disdain for Boris

That was a barmy idea. Sir Keir Starmer led on macroeconomics at PMQs and attacked the government over its economic failures. But next week’s elections are for local authorities which have no influence over the national coffers. It’s as if Sir Keir wanted to change the subject and talk about anything other than Labour’s ability to deliver local services.

He seemed ill-at-ease and disengaged. In need of a battery recharge. Very little stomach for the fight. And he relied on pre-scripted insults rather than improvising his comebacks. When Boris defended the Tory record with a list of memorised statistics, Sir Keir jeered at him:

‘These must be the Oxford Union debating tactics we’ve heard so much about lately: failing to answer the question, rambling incoherently, and throwing in garbled metaphors. Powerful stuff, Prime Minister.’

Where did that come from? Boris had committed none of the faults mentioned by Sir Keir. There was weakness in the air.

And he trotted out his favourite remedy for soaring energy prices: a windfall tax on Big Oil. The wrong policy. And the wrong moment to bring it up. Local councils have no power to clobber BP or Shell with a tax-grab. It was obvious Sir Keir was dodging the issue of local authorities altogether.

Ditto his backbenchers who adopted the same don’t-mention-the-Labour-party tactic. They hammered Boris over Rishi’s tax-hikes and they complained about the cost of living squeeze, but none of them cited a single benefit delivered by a Labour council anywhere in the country. Extraordinary. The Labour party seems to know that the Labour party is hopeless at local government.

Champion whinger Ian Blackford demanded yet more money for hard-hit Scots.

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