PM’s claims: not just ‘the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate’, but dangerous

Comparing Boris Johnson to Donald Trump has always felt a bit lazy. Ha ha, they’ve both got silly hair. They also have strong personalities and honed their performances through hosting TV shows. They weren’t always taken seriously and then they were elected to lead countries. They adopt populist rhetoric while clearly belonging to elites. It may be lazy, and it is certainly obvious, to draw such parallels. But right now it seems justified: Johnson’s latest use of the infamous ‘dead cat’ distraction tactic has felt particularly Trumpian – as many MPs, including Conservatives, have publicly remarked since the incident yesterday.

Keir Starmer and David Lammy were walking to parliament from a Ministry of Defence briefing when they were surrounded by angry protesters. The anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists shouted “traitor”, “disgrace”, “Freemason” and “New World Order” at the party leader, along with accusations of “protecting paedophiles”. “Why did you go after Julian Assange?” and “Why did you target a journalist?” were yelled, and the words “Jimmy Savile” were heard. This came exactly one week after Johnson claimed in parliament that as director of public prosecutions Starmer “spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can make out”.

While the Savile claim has been a meme in far-right circles for some time, the link between the two recent events is indisputable. A livestream yesterday recorded Piers Corbyn speaking to a fellow protester with a hangman noose prop, who referred to Starmer as “the paedophile protector” and said “Boris wasn’t allowed to mention that in the House, was he?”. Johnson’s words guaranteed that the idea was given his prime ministerial seal of approval. He has “clarified” his original comment, but refuses to retract it, despite the pressure to do so coming even from his policy chief who cited the matter when she resigned last week.

Much of the discussion since that claim in the House of Commons has been over whether the Prime Minister should apologise and whether it was accurate. Thankfully for Starmer, it has been made clear in mainstream media reports that Johnson’s accusation has been discredited. But too often, the context is forgotten: the Prime Minister threw that dead cat on the table (references to this strategy have been overused, but I think it is warranted on this occasion) during a debate about the Sue Gray report on Downing Street parties. What relevance did it have to illegal gatherings, some of which Johnson attended, that are being investigated by police? The point was rightly made on BBC Radio 4 this morning.

Labour insiders have noted that the longer Johnson stays in power, the more the reputations of his colleagues – and potential successors – are damaged. Polling suggests that the advantage Rishi Sunak once had over Keir Starmer in terms of public approval has reduced. But the straight-forward electoral calculation that leads Labour supporters to suspect it is advantageous if Johnson stays in post for now, dragging the whole Conservative Party down with him, overlooks the wider political consequences of the rule-breaker being in office while in a desperate state. Starmer was put in a police car and returned safely to his desk yesterday. But MPs have lost two colleagues to murder by extremists in the last six years. A number of politicians have directly blamed Johnson for yesterday’s scenes and they are right to be concerned: what the Prime Minister considers to be “the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate” is dangerous.