PMQs: Truss offers more of the same, Starmer stresses in appeal to voters

“She’s the fourth Tory Prime Minister in six years. The face at the top may change, but the story remains the same,” Keir Starmer told MPs during his first head-to-head with new Tory leader Liz Truss. That the Labour leader would focus on energy bills and Truss’ reported plans for a price cap freeze in Prime Minister’s Questions today was widely expected. The new Prime Minister confirmed during the session that she will make an announcement to the Commons on Thursday setting out her support measures, which she claimed would give people “certainty” for the winter months.

Starmer – who outlined Labour’s own plan to freeze energy bills last month – declared today that Truss “knows she’s no choice” but to back a freeze. The Labour leader avoided going too far down the ‘I-told-you-so’ route, deciding instead to focused on how the Prime Minister plans to pay for her energy bills plan. Noting her opposition to an expanded windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies, Starmer asked: “Is she really telling us that she’s going to leave these vast excess profits on the table and make working people fit the bill for decades to come?”

The Labour leader said Truss had chosen to “protect oil and gas profits” and was quick to add that this was not an isolated example. He highlighted the Prime Minister’s intention to axe a planned rise in corporation tax, stressing that doing so would hand a tax cut to water companies and to the banks. His decision to single out the water companies felt like a direct appeal to the audience watching at home, given public anger at the pollution caused by the companies across the country. “Families and public services need every penny they can get,” Starmer declared. “How on earth does she think that now is the right time to protect Shell’s profits and give Amazon a tax break?”

Truss claimed that she is “on the side of people who work hard and do the right thing”, highlighting her plan to scrap the increase in National Insurance contributions (a tax cut which has been shown to benefit wealthier households far more than those on low incomes). Starmer shot back that there is “nothing new” about Truss’ offer to the country, declaring that the new Prime Minister had “nodded through every single decision that got us into this mess”. Appealing again to his TV audience, Starmer stressed: “There’s nothing new about a Tory Prime Minister who, when asked who pays, says: ‘It’s you, the working people of Britain.'”

Truss’ reply was probably her strongest of the session, telling MPs there was “nothing new” about a Labour leader calling for tax rises. Nevertheless, Starmer argued convincingly that the new Prime Minister’s economic approach will simply be more of the same: protecting company profits while working people struggle to make ends meet.