PMQs verdict: Boris Johnson pulls political Houdini in the clash with Keir Starmer he couldn't afford to lose

Joe Murphy @JoeMurphyLondon23 September 2020
WEST END FINAL

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This time Boris Johnson was ready. Twice he had been shown up by that swotty Sir Keir Starmer but not again, his face said, not this time.

All his defences at the ready. He had boned up on the stats. There were more traps in the House of Commons than on Home Alone. A few noisy backbenchers were there to cheer and Hancock was on the front bench to put the boot in. He had some choice quips to lob at the fancy-pants lawyer and his “brilliant forensic mind”.

And he had a big fat promise up his sleeve of 25,000 new track ‘n’ trace officials by June 1, ready to carry out 10,000 traces each day.

This was the third meeting between the PM and the new Labour leader at Prime Minister’s Questions (scoreboard so far, two-nil to Starmer). Anticipation was high on both sides, the pressure on both men.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer
PRU/AFP via Getty Images

Starmer began with a slow run-up, pointing out a contradiction between the Health Secretary who said last Friday that care homes had “protective rings” around them from the start, and the chief executive of Care England telling a select committee yesterday that potential carriers of coronavirus were discharged from hospitals into homes, possibly seeding the disease.

Government advice at the time was that “negative tests are not required”, said the Labour leader, asking: “What’s protective about that?”

The trouble with rhetorical questions is they invite a rhetorical answer. Sir Keir should have stuck to his lawyerly approach.

Johnson jumped up: “As he knows full well,” he began, “… no-one was discharged into a care home this year without the express authorisation of a clinician … who had the interests of those patients at heart.” As alibis go, a statement that medical advice was followed is robust, but Johnson was not finished.

He went on the attack: “As I said to him last week, which he doesn’t seem to have remembered, actually the number of patients discharged from hospitals into care homes was 40 per cent down in March from January.” Moreover, there was “a sharp reduction” in deaths underway and surely Sir Keir ought to be paying tribute to “all those who have helped to fight that epidemic”.

No blood drawn that time. Sir Keir rose a second time. “I think the Prime Minister missed the point,” he protested, though privately perhaps kicking himself for not being more precise in his question. The Care England boss, said Starmer, had described the Government commitment to test all residents as an “announcement” but not yet a “delivery”. He asked: “What’s causing the continued delay in testing in our care homes?”

Johnson leapt to his feet looking confident. “He is simply in ignorance of the facts,” he decried, before listing “the reality” that 125,000 care home staff had been tested and daily tests for Covid-19 would soar to 200,000 by June. The PM mused that perhaps the chief prosecutor was holding back evidence, since surely Starmer knew the UK was testing more people now than virtually any country in Europe.

Sir Keir glowered. A courtroom would not allow such cheek from the dock towards a senior QC. He protested again that Johnson had ignored the question, and seemed distracted by the Health Secretary calling out from the Tory frontbench. Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle stepped in by robustly threatening to throw Hancock out of the chamber .

Starmer had now lost momentum and tried to rebuild his attack with damning statistics comparing Britain’s death toll (35,341 yesterday) and the numbers for Germany (around 8,000) and South Korea (under 300). The problem was the abandonment of tracing, said Starmer. “That’s a huge hole in our defences, isn’t it Prime Minister.”

For a third time, the run-up was more impressive that the delivery. The question lacked the killer precision of previous weeks. Johnson was acid in reply, accusing Starmer of “feigned ignorance” about the progress on track and test plans. It was “peculiar”, said the PM, that the briefings to the Leader of the Opposition seemed to have been ignored.

Then the PM pulled out his secret weapon, an announcement, with lots of caveats about it being provisional, “that by the first of June we will have 25,000 [trackers] and they will be capable of tracking 10,000 the contacts of 10,000 new cases a day.” At present, said Johnson, only 2,400 new cases were found every day, so perhaps the Labour leader would “abandon his slightly negative tone and support it”.

Starmer glared. “Thirty four thousand deaths isn't negative,” he said, before correcting himself “is negative.”

Responding to the “feigned ignorance” jibe, he said the PM knew that for 10 weeks there had been no tracing at all in the UK. There was no getting away from that, he said, repeating the phrase. Starmer appeared taken aback that the PM had pre-empted his next question. Unfortunately for him, he did not have a spare and asked, lamely, whether a “world beating” contact-tracing system would be ready by June 1.

The Tory leader jumped to his feet with the joy of a batman watching the bowler fumble and offer an easy six.

“The Right Hon gentleman appears to be in the unhappy position of having rehearsed his third or fourth question without having listened to my previous answer,” he exclaimed, looking behind him to the near-empty benches in the hope of a rousing cheer from Tory MPs who, alas for him, were mostly watching on their screens at home.

“Brilliant forensic mind,” drawled Johnson, letting his mockery hang in the air for a moment, then boasting that his system would indeed be world-beating and repeating all the figures he had listed before.

If the House had been packed, the Tory benches would have been thundering in support. Like the scene in Zulu when the first wave of attackers is repelled, the few Tories allowed into the chamber were delighted.

This wasn’t going to plan for Starmer, who switched his questioning to the anomaly that non-EU migrants who work in care services have to pay an annual charge towards the NHS. “Many of them are risking their lives for us,” he said. “Does the PM think it is right?”

Johnson replied gravely that he had thought long and hard about the issue. It was a sign of the PM’s confidence that he gave a clear and unabashed answer, rejecting the idea of exempting carers from the NHS charge. It was, in fact, his most prime ministerial response of the day.

“I do understand the difficulties faced by our amazing NHS staff,” he said, noting that carers from abroad had “frankly, saved my life”.

“But, on the other hand, we must look at the realities. This is a, a great national service, it's a national institution, it needs funding, and those contributions actually help us to raise about £900 million. It's very difficult in the current circumstances to find alternative sources.”

Sir Keir had an announcement of his own up his sleeve. Labour, he revealed, would put down an amendment to the Immigration Bill “to exempt NHS and care workers from this charge”.

It was a fascinating moment. Far from sparking horror on the Tory benches, his amendment deepened the discomfort of Labour MPs from the battered Red Wall already unhappy about having to oppose a Bill that many of their constituents support.

This was not the ending that Starmer had hoped for. The defendant was by now walking away from the dock, punching the air, hugging his cronies, and plotting to foment rebellions on the Labour benches while dishing out a fat pay rise to NHS angels.

The rest of PMQs saw the Prime Minister distinctly cheery. He had more baubles for the crowd: a hint at a medal for Covid-19 heroes, and, for Tory hawks, a promise of to speak out about “the buying up of UK tech by countries that may have ulterior motives...”

It was the clash that Johnson could not afford to lose. And like a political Houdini he pulled it off.

Next week, the House of Commons will be in recess for half term. By the time it comes back, the eerie, quiet Westminster landscape may have shifted in the PM’s favour.

For the cry has gone out from No 10 for MPs to come back in force and, if successful, this may have been the last PMQs in a socially-distanced chamber.

No longer would the gothic chamber have the grave air of the courtroom where Sir Keir’s previous attacks proved so effective.

Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast

With the return of crowds, it would turn back into a circus, the natural home for a showman Prime Minister.

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