Sir Keir Starmer could not help feeling elated. Just before Prime Minister’s Questions he had received another defector from the Conservatives, Natalie Elphicke.
At the start of PMQs, he “warmly welcomed” Chris Webb, victor of last week’s by-election in Blackpool South, to the Labour benches, followed by Elphicke, “the new Labour MP for Dover”.
Dover has gone Labour in 1945, 1964, 1997 and 2024. It was hard, watching from the gallery, not to feel that Elphicke’s defection portended a wider Conservative defeat.
“What is the point of this failed government staggering on?” Starmer demanded. “How many more times do the public and his own MPs need to reject him before he takes the hint?”
“He can be as cocky as he likes about local elections,” Sunak replied, “but come a general election it’s policy that counts.”
According to the Prime Minister, those words were uttered by Tony Blair a year ago, but they did not now diminish Starmer’s cockiness.
Class war has been the favoured sport of socialists since the days when Karl Marx picnicked on Hampstead Heath, and Starmer set out to have some sport with Sunak: “At his mansion in Richmond he can enjoy a brand-new Labour Mayor of North Yorkshire.”
Sunak retorted that “the people of North Yorkshire believe in hard work, secure borders, lower taxes and straight-talking common sense, and they’re not going to get any of that from a virtue-signalling lawyer from North London”.
Starmer nevertheless continued to virtue-signal. He sees the prize within his grasp, and cannot believe it will elude him now.
Sunak, who sounded as if he had a cold, gave dull, prudent, well-informed answers to the rest of the questions put to him at PMQs.
He displayed a marvellous command of detail, but could not hit on any way of putting fresh heart into his dejected troops.
He and his supporters must hope that Starmer and co will give way to hubris, and start behaving as if they have already won the general election.