Sir Keir Starmer today joined the publicity campaign for Liz Truss’s book. After noting that she describes “the Tories’ disastrous kamikaze Budget” as “the happiest moment of her premiership”, the Leader of the Opposition asked: “Has the Prime Minister met anyone with a mortgage who agrees?”
Not a bad jab from Starmer, but it provoked a better riposte from Sunak: “He ought to spend a bit less time reading that book and a bit more time reading the Deputy Leader’s tax advice.”
The Conservatives loved that. They laughed and cheered the Prime Minister louder and longer than they have for months.
Starmer had some time, during this laughter at his expense to work out how to wrest back the initiative, and defend his Deputy, Angela Rayner, who sat smiling her defiance.
But Starmer himself was no longer smiling, and all he could come up with was: “We’ve got a billionaire Prime Minister, both of whose families have used schemes to avoid millions of pounds of tax, smearing a working-class woman.”
When in a tight spot, resort to class war. It got him through, but he never regained the upper hand. In vain he attempted to embarrass the present PM by referring to the last PM’s unfunded tax cuts.
Sunak was able to retort that two years ago, he had warned against Truss’s economic policy. That was the essential difficulty with using Truss to embarrass Sunak. The Prime Minister long ago cut himself free from her.
At the end of Sunak’s answers to Starmer, Tory backbenchers shouted “more”. They love it when their leader gives his pious, ponderous opponent a bloody nose. One would not have thought, from these exchanges, that Labour is 20 points ahead in the polls, and expected to win a crushing victory at the next general election.
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Author: Andrew Gimson
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