PMQs Sketch: Boris Johnson gets off lightly after Keir Starmer fails to punish him for fortnight of gaffes

Like Joe Biden, the Labour leader ended up relying on points to scape over the line
AP
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The first rule of politics is never admit to screwing up.  You might think that would be getting increasingly hard for Boris Johnson – but somehow Sir Keir Starmer let him escape lightly.

A quick tally of recent cock-ups. There was the PM’s refusal to fund half term free school dinners; calling a circuit breaker lockdown “the height of absurdity” and then ordering one anyway; getting into a stand-up row with Andy Burnham.  On all of these, Sir Keir Starmer had told him he was wrong and had been proven right. Surely there would be no more finger-jabs at “Captain Hindsight” after this afternoon’s defenestration.  Not exactly.

Johnson sauntered in with breezy confidence and a joke about a "heavily contested election", which turned out to mean the first anniversary of Sir Lindsay Hoyle taking the Speaker’s chair from John Bercow and “making the speakership great again".

A beaming Sir Lindsay succumbed to the flattery. One down. Just 648 to go.

Sir Keir rose with a frown and a comment on the US election battle .  “Will the PM join me in saying that it's not for a candidate to decide which votes do and don't count, or when to stop counting?”  Johnson was never likely to condemn a sitting US President, but his refusal doubtless disgusted some of the people who were never going to vote for him anyway.

Then Starmer turned to the circuit breaker lockdown that Mr Johnson had put off.  His delivery was cold as ice. On September 21, when Government scientists advised a short lockdown, the daily death toll was just 11. On Monday, 42 days later, it had risen to 397.  

"That's a staggering 35 fold increase,” whispered Starmer. “Does the Prime Minister understand the human cost of his delay in acting?"

Questions don’t get much more lethal or personal than that. Johnson obeyed the first rule to the letter, saying: “It was always right to pursue a local and a regional approach.” And the three-tiered system “actually was showing signs of working”, the PM claimed.

Sir Keir argued that an earlier lockdown could have been shorter and asked unnecessarily: “Does the Prime Minister understand the economic cost of his delay in acting?”

Johnson started returning fire. Starmer had backed the regional approach “as long as it was useful to him, for a while”.  

Sir Keir never really scored after that.  He switched tack:  “Will the lockdown end on December 2 come what may? Or will it depend on the circumstances at the time?"  

A trick question: Johnson could confirm the deadline and risk having to eat his words, or deny it and enrage Tory MPs just before a big Commons vote on lockdown. Of course, the PM sidestepped it, saying lockdown would end if “we all do our bit” and it would be for MPs to decide.

Interestingly, Johnson promised “a very, very different approach” after December 2, which gave yet another hint of his confidence that mass testing will keep the R number down.

Starmer had another go, asking if lockdown would end even if the R number was above 1, indicating that the infection rate was rising.  But Johnson was no longer listening, instead he said it was time for Sir Keir to “make his position clear" and say what he would do.

“I just want some basic honesty," protested Labour’s leader before swivelling to the chaos in NHS Test & Trace.

On this subject, Johnson came closest to breaking the First Rule. “I'm perfectly willing to accept the failings of Test and Trace, of course I am,” he said. 

If Dido Harding was listening, she might be wise to take a cardboard box into her office to pack up her things.  

For his last question, Starmer called for a scheme to allow families to visit elderly relatives in care homes.  A mistake.  Johnson can emote just as powerfully as him about the misery suffered by families who are separated by coronavirus curbs, and he also announced that new guidance was being issued later today designed “to strike the right balance”.

Sir Keir’s suggestion of cross-party also gave the PM an excuse to hit back: “I have to say that he has used this crisis as an opportunity to make political capital – to have what a shadow spokesman called ‘a good crisis’.”

Johnson then teased the Opposition benches by suggesting they follow the approach of former leader Tony Blair, who had written “a good piece I today’s Daily Mail in which he broadly supports our strategy”.  Labour MPs glowered: The only thing that offends them more than Blair nowadays is the Daily Mail. "He should take a leaf out of the Blair book,” Johnson taunted Sir Keir. “Tony Blair would not have spent four years in the same shadow cabinet as Jeremy Corbyn, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him."  

It should have been an easy victory for Sir Keir, a slam-dunk, a knockout.  But like Joe Biden he ended up relying on points to scape over the line.  

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