In his tireless campaign to prove he has a bigger heart than Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer today enlisted two new allies. The first is George Freeman (Con, Mid Norfolk), who recently revealed that he left the Government because he “simply couldn’t afford” to pay his mortgage on a ministerial salary.
Nobody, Starmer said, “could fail to be moved by the plight of the Member for Mid Norfolk”: a brazen attempt to satirise the Conservatives and portray them as out of touch.
Starmer proceeded to boast that he this week he actually met an ordinary person, “one of the employees of Iceland in Warrington, Phil”.
Hmmm. Not much detail there. It is possible that by the time this sketch is published, Phil will have been tracked down and will have broadcast his troubles to a horrified nation.
But meanwhile the Conservatives were sceptical, which gave Starmer the chance to denounce them for “laughing at an employee of Iceland who’s struggling with his mortgage. Shame!”
They were actually laughing at the Leader of the Opposition for boasting about knowing Phil, but as far as Starmer is concerned, that is worse, for it challenges his contention that only Labour really knows and cares about Phil.
“I hope he explained to Phil the cost of his policies,” Sunak said. There can be no doubt that had Sunak not gone into politics, he could have been a competent mortgage broker, never happier than when explaining to Phil the cost of Labour’s policies.
But the House had by now had its fill of Phil. Stephen Flynn, for the Scots Nats, wondered whether, now that Labour has abandoned its opposition to the cap on bankers’ bonuses, the Prime Minister is “comforted that he’s no longer alone in the House in being completely out of touch with public opinion”.
Sunak retorted, in his best financial adviser manner, that Scotland is now, thanks to the Nats, “the highest taxed part of the United Kingdom”.
The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said at the start of today’s session that there has been “an escalation in unhelpful exchanges from sedentary positions”, and while he knows there is a general election coming, he would like it to stop.
It did not stop, for Prime Minister’s Questions has become a weekly testing ground for the different parties’ election slogans. When Phil at long last has the chance cast his ballot, it seems conceivable he will not feel inclined to support any of them.