PMQs: Starmer’s delivery lets down a strong script on the ambulance crisis

Keir Starmer devoted all of his questions during this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions to the current state of ambulance services – ahead of the announcement of further strike dates by ambulance staff in the GMB. Less than a hour after the Labour leader spoke, the union confirmed that its members would take part in four more walkouts in February and March. Across a number of questions, Starmer set out a hypothetical case of someone calling 999 over a suspected heart attack, asking Rishi Sunak when an ambulance would arrive. Highlighting the more-than-two-hour average waiting times in Tory-held Peterborough and Northampton and Plymouth (where one of the city’s two seats is Tory and a Labour target) Starmer urged the Prime Minister to “take some responsibility” and “admit, under his watch, the NHS is in crisis”.

Sunak tried to brazen it out, accusing Starmer of “depriving” people of care by failing to back the government’s minimum service levels bill – legislation that has been described as “undemocratic, unworkable and likely illegal” by the TUC. The repeated allegation that Labour are “denying” people the “guarantee of emergency live-saving care” is particularly egregious given the clear evidence of a crisis in the NHS before the Covid pandemic. According to the King’s Fund, the NHS has not met the four-hour operational standard for A&E waiting times at a national level in any year since 2013/14, which the think tank attributed to a “decade of funding settlements that failed to keep up with demand for services and growing staff shortages”.

Starmer has effectively used human examples to illustrate the real-life impacts of Tory failure in previous sessions. Continuing with the story of the hypothetical heart attack victim, Starmer responded to jeers from the Conservative benches by declaring: “This is your constituent.” Adding weight to this response, the Labour leader raised the story of Stephanie from Plymouth, a 26-year-old woman with cancer, who died while waiting for an ambulance after collapsing at home. “On behalf of Stephanie and her family,” the Labour leader asked Sunak. “Will he stop the excuses, stop shifting the blame, stop the political games and simply tell us, when will he sort out these delays?”

Starmer’s script was strong – topical, relatable and peppered with good attack lines, notably his call for Sunak to apologise for the “lethal chaos” taking place under his leadership. But the Labour leader’s delivery let him down, weakening the overall impact of his arguments. The Prime Minister also landed his fair share of punches. For a second week in a row, he criticised Starmer’s changing policy stance, declaring that the Labour leader will “break promises left, right and centre”. Sunak’s final line was an especially effective (though not entirely accurate) soundbite: “He isn’t just for the free movement of people, he’s also got the free movement of principles.”