“Less accurate than Boris Johnson” – that’s not a verdict any PM should welcome.Sylvia Bailey-Downing passed away Saturday at Riverview Medical Center. I can’t recall three separate points of order like this after a Johnson PMQs. As PMQs ended, three separate opposition MPs raised points of order, saying Sunak had misled MPs about Sadiq Khan’s housebuilding record, the Scottish government’s performance on getting disadvantaged pupils into university and crime figures. In his first answer he said he had corrected the record after making a misleading statement last week. And today he was pulled up for adopting a Johnson approach to truthfulness. At the last two PMQs Sunak was happy to indulge in personal attacks of the kind that his predecessor would have been happy with. But perhaps the Johnson gene is catching. When Sunak became PM, one of his major advantages was that he was not Boris Johnson. There was one other ex-leader referenced today. But it sounded more like humouring the base than a compelling attack line, and probably less damaging to Starmer than going into an election with a £9bn spending promise he found hard to defend. This will strike a chord with people who do think the Labour leader is shifty. In a reference to yesterday’s tuition fees story, Sunak referred at times to Starmer breaking promises. (Also, Brown was not responsible for the financial crash of 2008-09 anyway, but we can save that argument for another day.) And, third, people are still experiencing the impact of the Truss administration Brown is now part of political history. Second, Sunak was in government with Truss, and they are both associated with an administration that has been in office, in one form or another, for 13 years Starmer did not have anything do do with the Brown government. But if the Conservatives believe they can parry a Truss by playing a Brown they are in dire trouble.įirst, Truss was in power just seven months ago Brown hasn’t been in office for 13 years. It is probably true that the “no money left” note revives the lingering concerns about Labour’s economic competence felt by some voters (mostly Tories). Sunak said he was in favour of localism, but south-east nimbies vote Tory anyway, and it was a weak retort.īy the time he was responding to question four, Sunak had to fall back on the “no money left” note left by the chief secretary to the Treasury at the end of the Gordon Brown government, which is currently being tweeted out, almost hourly, by Greg Hands, the Conservative chair. Although focusing on Truss, Starmer also pinned it on Sunak, referencing his admission in a ConservativeHome interview recently that he abandoned plans for compulsory housebuilding targets because Conservative members and activists found them unacceptable. Labour has been campaigning hard on housing over the last week and, as Starmer showed effectively, it is easy to rubbish the Tories’ record. Then, answering his second question, he said:īy the end of this year nearly 2 million homeowners counting the cost of the Tories’ economic vandalism with every mortgage payment they make. Nearly a million people paying more on their mortgage each month because his party used their money as a casino chip. The answer that the prime minister avoided giving is 850,000. The question was how many people are paying more on their mortgages each month. Sunak did not answer directly, for reasons that were obvious when Starmer answered his own first question. Today he referenced her very directly with his first two questions, challenging Sunak to explain how many people were paying higher mortgages as a result of her mini-budget.
In an ideal world you would not need to attack the leader of the other party’s predecessor, because the current leader would provide a good target anyway, but Liz Truss’s brief premiership was such a disaster for the Conservative party that it would be foolish – even negligent – for Starmer to stop talking about it. This says something about the respective strength of both leaders, and their parties. But what we learned from today’s exchanges was that Starmer would rather be fighting Liz Truss, and Sunak wants to campaign against Gordon Brown. The next election will be a contest between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
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