“God’s got the air-conditioning on,” the man guarding the gate to the Palace of Westminster remarked, after we had agreed that today’s weather in London is wonderful, being both sunny and breezy, the ideal temperature for any kind of gentle outdoor activity.
Sir Keir Starmer’s task at Prime Minister’s Questions is to turn up the temperature in the Chamber and make the Prime Minister feel the heat.
For the past few days the media had done their bit to tee things up for Starmer, by reporting a potentially embarrassing story about Suella Braverman and a speed awareness course, followed by one about Boris Johnson possibly breaking some Covid regulations at Chequers.
Braverman had taken the precaution of arriving well ahead of PMQs, seating herself on the front bench half-way through a quiet session of Welsh Questions, when the House was only half-full and she would not attract jeers or cheers.
Sunak as usual entered moments before PMQs, and received from the by then full House a raucous cheer, in which it was hard to separate genuine from ironical support.
Starmer began by asking how many work visas had been issued to foreign nationals in the last year, a figure Sunak declined to offer, so Starmer went on: “It’s a quarter of a million. He knows that answer. He just doesn’t want to give it.”
The Labour leader adopted the pained expression of moral superiority which can be seen in the picture above this article. He looked like a maths teacher who has devised a tedious series of hoops for the class to jump through in today’s lesson, but who has not the faintest has no idea how to get Sunak, a gifted student, to follow the lesson plan.
Sunak’s demeanour remained sunny and breezy, as for the most part did Braverman’s, sitting beside him. Starmer alluded to her difficulties – “speeding into the void left by the Prime Minister comes the Home Secretary” – without actually declaring that what she had done was wrong.
A pained expression of moral superiority is quite enough to carry one through a North London dinner party: no need to explain to one’s fellow North Londoners why the Government’s immigration policy is wrong and Braverman, its most outspoken defender, must go.
But at PMQs, it is not sufficient. Starmer would not condemn either the policy or the minister. He was willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike. The House was asked to agree with him because he is a better person.
Week after week, Sunak calls that bluff, and declines to be written off a moral imbecile. One day he must falter: every PM does. But Starmer has not the faintest idea how to trip him up.