PMQs: Starmer leans into the lawyer thing as Johnson plays the fool

Keir Starmer’s performance was much improved at Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Week by week, the Labour leader is trying to match public opinion – which partly explains why he didn’t oppose a vast swathe of restrictions being lifted yesterday – while building an image of Boris Johnson as the wrong man to be leading the country during this crisis. But Starmer’s slow approach can sometimes verge on the lengthy and frankly boring, which can undermine his incisive questioning. This week, however, his questions were brisk and much more lively.

There was plenty of material for Starmer to go on. There is no app as promised, which means NHS Test and Trace is entirely manual – and it is not reaching enough people with coronavirus. “If two thirds of those with Covid-19 aren’t being reached, there’s a big problem,” the opposition leader pointed out. Dido Harding! the PM replied. Positivity! Pride! Patriotism! With ‘Independence Day’  on the horizon, Johnson is back to his bouncy, bombastic persona. Pressed further, he argued that these numbers are just estimates, you see, nothing to be worried about. Except they are the government’s own figures, Starmer replied, again using press conference slides as a handy prop.

As usual, the Prime Minister is “brushing aside challenge, dashing forward, not estimating properly the risks”, Starmer argued. Johnson went on to illustrate the point as he denied there was room for improvement in test-and-trace, accused his opposite of “yo-yoing” and being a lawyer, then made a series of false claims. He insisted that there is not a single country in the world with a contact tracing app (Germany and a number of others have launched apps), and refused to admit that he misled the Commons last week when he claimed that there are 400,000 fewer families living in poverty now than in 2010 (there does not appear to be any data backing up this assertion, and it was rejected by the Children’s Commissioner as “false”).

Keir Starmer is sensible, that’s his thing, while Boris Johnson plays the fool who is adept at coming up with pithy phrases that are remarkably useful in politics as well as journalism. But the Labour leader showed some flair when he said today that the Prime Minister “dodges the question or gives dodgy answers”, before concluding: “No more witnesses, I rest my case.” After Johnson repeatedly accused him of being too lawyerly, Starmer has decided to lean into that perception. Well, there is no point pretending that he isn’t one, and pinning Labour’s hopes on the bet that voters will look for a famously ‘forensic’ leader after this tumultuous time isn’t an unreasonable one.