“Make way for the pint-sized prat!” shouted one of the demonstrators who gather each Wednesday on the traffic island at the bottom of Whitehall.
It was a beautiful spring morning, the sun shining, the trees coming into leaf, the air at last with a touch of warmth, but Rishi Sunak could enjoy none of this.
Not for him a stroll along the pavement past the tourists taking pictures of themselves with Big Ben in the background. Nor could he bicycle, as your correspondent at that moment happened to be doing, past the traffic jam which had formed at the lights on the edge of Parliament Square.
Space for the prime ministerial motorcade had to be cleared by motorcycle outriders who brought all movement by other vehicles to a halt, so Sunak in his armoured Range Rover with escorting vehicles could sweep down the wrong side of Whitehall, the only part where there was room, across the corner of the square by Churchill’s statue and through the gates into New Palace Yard.
How horrible to be shut up like that on a beautiful day. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister from 1963-64, hated not being allowed to walk in London, and so one would guess does Sunak.
But Harold Wilson was a much trickier opponent at PMQs for Home than Sir Keir Starmer is for Sunak. Somehow Labour’s huge lead in the opinion polls seldom translates into supremacy at the Despatch Box.
This week Starmer had brought a defector with him. There, sitting directly behind the Leader of the Opposition, was Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich), who a few days ago informed an astonished world that he was leaving the Conservatives and joining Labour.
The world was astonished because it had not heard of Poulter, who announced, in explanation of his conduct, that he found it increasingly difficult to look his NHS colleagues in the eye while remaining a Tory.
Today Poulter had to look the Tories in the eye, and did not seem especially comfortable as he did so. The fate of the turncoat is generally to find that his former colleagues no longer trust him, and nor do his new ones.
Starmer naturally boasted about his new recruit, to which Sunak, showing an admirable cool, responded: “I’m glad to actually see the Honourable Gentleman.” Tory backbenchers enjoyed this, for Poulter at his moment of fame was dubbed “the Invisible Man” by one of the Ipswich Conservatives.
Some electioneering followed, with Starmer asking dreary questions about the supposed Tory plan to abolish National Insurance, which if carried out would cost £46 billion.
“I know that economics is not his strong suit,” Sunak replied. He remarked that he had already answered this question a few weeks ago, and proceeded, not at all excitingly, to insist that pensioners are safe with the Tories, and to remind Starmer that not many years ago a special piece of legislation applying to him alone, The Pension Increase Scheme for Keir Starmer QC, was passed through the House.
Stephen Flynn, parliamentary leader of the SNP, wondered whether the Prime Minister is “giving active consideration to the deployment of British forces in the Middle East”, i.e. in Gaza.
Sunak parried this by saying he does not discuss “operational matters”, and by pointing out that more aid is reaching Gaza.
But at least Flynn had taken the chance to ask a serious question, and one Starmer might have found awkward to put, for many Labour MPs and members are furious with him about Gaza.