PMQs verdict: Sir Keir won’t let Boris forget about that letter — but the Prime Minister is learning to land blows on his lawyerly opponent

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Dear Prime Minister. Next time Sir Keir Starmer writes you a private letter, don’t push it aside until after Gogglebox. Don’t leave it lying around for Dilyn to chew up. Send him a thank you, a complements slip, anything; just don’t forget it.

Because Sir Keir takes the art of correspondence as seriously as Queen Victoria, we discovered at Prime Minister’s Questions when he once again protested he still hadn’t had a response to a secret missive offering to help organise a “task force” for the reopening of schools.

“It’s not too late,” appealed Sir Keir. Even now “everybody could put their shoulder to the wheel” and restore lessons halted by coronavirus.

Now it may be that Starmer’s task force would have sailed in like the United Nations, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama combined to coax nervous teachers, militant unions, parents and heads into agreement. Tragically, we shall never know.

Sir Keir Starmer said "everybody could put their shoulder to the wheel” to help restore school lessons halted by coronavirus
PA

We do know, however, that the Prime Minister is not a dedicated correspondent. “As I told the House before, I’ve been in contact with the Right Honourable gentleman by a modern device called the telephone,” he told MPs, voice dancing with amusement.

Week five of the gripping Johnson V Starmer contest saw the pair of them getting more tetchy with each other, while growing in confidence at needling the other’s weaknesses.

Starmer pummelled his key theme that the Tory leader has been woefully exposed by Covid-19 as incompetent and inattentive. The Prime Minister accused his opponent of “tergiversation”, a word that would send Queen Victoria scurrying for her dictionary. It means pusillanimous, contradictory or shifty, which is the label that he hopes to hang around his rival’s neck by the next General Election.

There is no doubt that Starmer’s patient and intelligent questioning is hitting home to a Prime Minister who has never been known for his delight in the fine detail. But equally it is clear that Johnson, having soaked up some early defeats, has raised his game.

The exchanges started gravely with Starmer questioning the Government’s record of heeding the recommendations of no fewer than seven reports into racial inequalities over the past three years. It was time to “turbocharge” the Government’s responsiveness, beginning with a pledge to implement “in full” the recommendations of the looming Windrush report.

Johnson’ response showed the differences between him and Donald Trump. “I agree that black lives matter” he said, and empathised with “the very strong, and legitimate feelings of people in this country over the death of George Floyd”.

The PM probably gave a fuller answer than Sir Keir had hoped, discoursing knowledgeably about prosecutions and body-worn cameras with the familiarity of a former Mayor of London responsible for the capital’s policing.

Starmer noted coolly that “people do notice when recommendations are made and then not implemented” in a tone that made clear he, for one, will be keeping tally.

He turned to the horrendous covid-19 death rates amongst black and Asian people, asking what the Government was doing in response to the shocking data.

A betting man would have predicted that the PM would have little to promise, since equalities minister Kemi Badenoch appeared empty-handed at the Despatch Box on the day the report was debated last week. Johnson came better prepared.

“We are already active,” he said, announcing an extension of coronavirus testing for people in jobs that are especially vulnerable to the virus, including bus drivers, many of them BAME workers. He had had a chat with Dido and it was sorted. He sat down.

Johnson “mourned” and “grieved” for the victims but claimed international comparisons were impossible until the epidemic “has been through its whole cycle”
Sky News

Sir Keir, deflated, asked if that was “all of the action” or not. He had the look of an angler who seen a fat trout slither back into the waters just before the filleting knife came out.

He tried a different tack, reading out the grim UK death toll (40,000 by testing, 50,000 when measured by death certificates, 63,000 measured by excess deaths) and the blade flashed: “Last week the prime minister said he was proud of the government’s record. But there’s no pride in those figures, is there?”

Johnson “mourned” and “grieved” for the victims but claimed international comparisons were impossible until the epidemic “has been through its whole cycle”.

The Labour leader spat back:. “It just doesn’t wash to say that we can’t compare these figures to other countries … Everybody can see the disparity.

“There’s little solace to families that have lost someone to simply be told: ‘It’s too early to compare and to learn from other countries,’”.

Sir Keir then brought up the deeply sensitive matter of his tragically overlooked private letter. Johnson recalled that they had talked by phone of a plan “which he then seemed to deviate from later on”.

The PM then switched into a full-on attack. “Last week he was telling the House that it was not yet safe for kids to go back to school. This week he’s saying not enough kids are going back to school. I really think he needs to he needs to make up his mind.” Tory backbenchers got excited about that – even in the socially distanced chamber.

If Starmer liked international comparisons so much, continued Johnson, then how about those countries where no primary school pupils were getting lessons at all? “What we’d like to hear from the Right Honourable gentleman is a bit of support,” he challenged. “Perhaps even a bit of encouragement to his friends in the trade unions to help get our schools ready.” Ouch. That was the sort of low blow reserved for elections rather than moments of national crisis.

Labour’s leader stood up furiously, muttering he would “have this out”. Sadly, he didn't mean he would take the PM behind the Speaker’s chair for satisfaction through fisticuffs, but that he wanted to get to the bottom of that wretched letter. “The Prime Minister and I have never discussed that letter in any phone call, he knows that and I know it,” he complained bitterly. “The task force has never been the subject of conversation between him and me. He knows it. So please drop that.”

Starmer accused the PM of “flailing around trying to blame others”, which caused such a reaction that Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had to call for quiet – the first such intervention since the chamber was lain almost empty by coronavirus measures.

“It’s time he took responsibility for his own failures, this mess was completely avoidable,” Starmer charged. “It must have occurred to the government that space would be a problem…They built the Nightingale hospitals, why are they only starting on schools now?”

This was all said with a mixture of anger and contempt that would redden the face of a career criminal in the dock of the Old Bailey. But the Prime Minister has a thicker hide than that, and a gleam of pure delight at getting under his enemy’s skin could be glimpsed beneath his untidy shock of lockdown hair.

Johnson leapt up. “He still can’t work out whether he is saying schools are not safe enough, or whether we should be going back more quickly,” he jibed.

Then came Johnson’s best line, a haymaker thwack at lawyers like the former DPP standing opposite him. “You can’t you can’t have it both ways with one brief one day and another brief the next,” he mocked. “I understand how the legal profession works - but what the public wants is some consistency.”

A historical note: Margaret Thatcher used a similar line in her valedictory performance at the Despatch Box in 1990, when she utterly squashed Labour MP Greville Janner (yes, that one) with the crushing observation that being a lawyer: “He can speak to any brief and I don’t believe he believes a word of it.”

It was Starmer’s turn to be on the defensive. He said he wanted children back as soon as possible when it is safe. “I’ve been saying that, like a broken record for weeks on end. I know the Prime Minister’s got rehearsed attack lines, but he should look at what I read from this letter.” That blooming letter again!

For his final question Starmer made an appeal to extend through summer the national voucher scheme that gives 1.3 million children free meals. “Yesterday the Education Secretary said that won’t be the case in England. That’s just wrong. And it will lead to further inequality.”

Johnson said it was not usual to extend free school meals into the summer holidays but he did not rule out the idea. “This government has put its arms around the people in this country,” he claimed. “I may say it is not helped by the wobbling and tergiversation of the Labour Party.”

Memo to Sir Keir. Ask him what it means next time he phones for a chat but, please, don’t write him a letter.

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