Keir Starmer was left flapping like a salmon in the jaws of a bear cub: HENRY DEEDES sees Labour leader and Boris Johnson go head-to-head at PMQs
Boris Johnson blasted his way to victory over Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, though it wasn’t pretty.
A triumph of bludgeon over rapier, blunderbuss over pistolet.
As displays go, this was a ragged, up-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck sort of performance. What tennis coaches call ‘winning ugly’. But it was no less enjoyable for that.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson (pictured) appeared to be victorious in his Prime Minister's Questions debate with Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer (not pictured)
Six times Sir Keir pinged one of his well-researched queries over the despatch box.
Six times the Prime Minister would simply jab his stubby fingers and twiddle his straw-like mop before wrenching the discussion back to Sir Keir’s failure to support our schools returning.
Shabby? Yup. But boy was it effective. By the end, Starmer was left flapping like a salmon clamped inside the jaws of a bear cub.
The PM was perhaps fortunate that Sir Keir chose not to dwell on the free schools meal fiasco or that murky Richard Desmond property development business currently engulfing the Housing Department.
Instead, he arrived in the chamber clutching a rather earnest report on child poverty.
Starmer loves whipping these reports out of his quiver, safe in the knowledge that Boris won’t have even looked at them.
He waved it around the despatch box with a magician’s flourish before announcing another 600,000 children were now living in poverty.
Sure enough, Boris had no more read the document than he had this month’s issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. No matter. Since he was being asked about children he saw the chance to yank the conversation over to schools.
He announced that the best way we could help disadvantaged children would be to ‘encourage all kids who can go back to school to go back to school’, adding: ‘Last week I asked him whether he would say schools were safe to go back to. He hummed and he hawed. Now he has the chance to do so.’
The Prime Minister made a dig at Sir Keir (pictured right)'s legal background, and even used Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle (left) to back his argument up
Sitting down, he added mockingly: ‘Mr Speaker, your witness!’
Sir Keir curled his lip. This was the second week running that the PM has made a dig about his legal background. Didn’t like it. He decided to have a go at him over the shortfall in council funding.
The PM replied that he’d given lots of money to councils. A recent extra £3.2billion in fact. ‘But I must say we didn’t hear an answer,’ he yelled, sensing he’d hit a nerve. ‘Lets hear it from him one more time – are schools safe to go back to?’
Snap! Something suddenly went in Starmer’s central fuse box. ‘This is turning into opposition questions,’ he complained. ‘If the Prime Minister wants to swap places we could do it now.’
As he said this, Sir Keir swivelled towards his benches for support. A thin bead of sweat by now appeared on his upper lip. For the first time, the molten atmosphere of PMQs was turning against him.
Starmer laboured on with his boring council statistics, once more ignoring the jibes about schools. Boris leapt at the chance at another free hit.
Starmer ignored the Prime Minister's jibes about schools and laboured on with some boris council statistics, something which the PM pounced on
‘We didn’t have an answer, did we Mr Speaker?’ he bellowed. ‘The unions won’t let him say the truth. A great ox has stood upon his tongue!’
The PM was quoting from the Greek playwright Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, always a sign that he’s back on form.
The chamber certainly thought so. Not in this newly reduced PMQs has there been such laughter. Up in the public gallery Andrew Bowie (Con, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) hooted and bounced up and down in his seat. Even Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle was guffawing.
The old guard congratulated the PM on his rediscovered vim. Bob Stewart (Con, Beckenham) said it was good to see the PM ‘fighting fit’. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con, Cotswolds) declared him ‘back in robust form’.
That old crawler Sir Geoffrey boasted that 50 per cent of schools in Gloucestershire were now back in the classroom.
Boris beamed at this good piece of news, responding: ‘Would it not be a fine thing if we heard from all parts of the House that schools are safe to go to rather than the wibble-wobble we’ve heard from the opposition today?’
Wibble-wobble? That might have been a new one on the transcribers of Hansard. But as we saw yesterday, this Prime Minister is hardly orthodox.
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