PMQs: Boris Johnson’s serial inaction and incompetence on display

Keir Starmer went into Prime Minister’s Questions following reports that voters do not know what Labour stands for, think the leader is “sitting on the fence” and reckon the party has been “way too quiet”. This was not lost on the Prime Minister, who tried to highlight the findings during his final response to Starmer before he was interrupted by the Speaker and told his answers should be “somewhere near the question asked”. But despite trying to push the point that the Labour leader is seen as indecisive by the electorate, it was Boris Johnson’s inaction on display today as Starmer focused on Covid border policy and the cladding scandal.

After paying tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore and former Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun, the Labour leader kicked off with Covid border policy. He asked Johnson why he ignored advice from SAGE two weeks ago to close the borders or introduce mandatory quarantining for all coming into the country: “Why did the Prime Minister choose not to do the one thing that SAGE said could prevent new variants coming to the UK?” Was it simply that it is just “too difficult”, he asked, or that he thinks it “would make no difference”? Johnson denied that this was the case, arguing that SAGE had not recommended any such measures. The government has announced a partial hotel quarantining system, for arrivals from 30 countries, but no date has been given for when this policy will be implemented.

Starmer highlighted the complete inability of government to grasp the national cladding scandal. He challenged the Prime Minister as to why, three-and-a-half years after the Grenfell fire, there are still “hundreds of thousands of people living in homes with unsafe cladding” and why millions of leaseholders are stuck in flats they cannot sell and face extortionate costs to remove the dangerous materials. The Labour leader highlighted the case of an NHS doctor, working on the Covid frontline during the day and worrying about a £52,000 bill when he goes home. The PM had little comfort to offer, saying leaseholders should not have to pay “unaffordable costs” and telling MPs that the Chancellor will be coming up with a “complete package” to tackle the problem. As Starmer emphasised with the case of one leaseholder, made bankrupt at the age of 27, that it is simply too late for many.

This afternoon can be seen as a microcosm of the challenge facing Starmer. He highlighted effectively today how incompetent the PM and his administration is – failing to take action on problems left to rumble on, causing ever greater harm as they do. But the criticism that Starmer is “sitting on the fence” seems to be sticking. This is in part due to the challenge of being in opposition during a national crisis. The Labour leader has been ramping up the criticism of the government slowly throughout the pandemic, but has always been cautious to remain ‘constructive’. It is not enough to show that Johnson is bad at his job. Labour needs to give an alternative vision: a different plan for how it would deal with this crisis, but also for how it would be transformative and markedly different in power.