PMQs: Better Boris avoids being marmalised by Starmer

Number 10 was determined today to avoid a repeat of the last two editions of PMQs, when the Prime Minister was forensically taken apart, politely baseball-batted and then maramalised by the new leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer. Last week’s bruising encounter put Boris Johnson in a foul mood on his return to the Downing Street bunker.

This week it was a better Boris who came to the chamber. There had clearly been a lot of rehearsal, and a strenuous effort put into attaining that most elusive state of existence – getting Boris into a position whereby he is in command of the detail. On preparation did we detect the intervention behind the scenes of Michael Gove, a skilled Commons performer who has helped on PMQs “prep” Tory leaders  from the accomplished to the, er, less than accomplished?

Whatever they did to Boris (show him a picture of a Pickfords removal van?) it produced the desired increase in energy levels. Today he was much more punchy and far less glib, and as a result won in the narrow theatrical, gladiatorial terms by which PMQs tends to be judged.

But Starmer is asking – that over-used word, a cliche because it’s true – “forensic” questions about worrying failings in government policy on care homes and the test and tracing regime. Boris bluster is not enough.

Starmer asked whether the government should have looked out for care homes earlier on in the crisis. Citing evidence by the chief executive of Care England, he said this was a “very serious issue.” It is, but Starmer hadn’t framed the question quite directly enough.

Boris then tried out his new “master of the detail” persona with mixed results: “As I said to him last week, which he doesn’t seem to have remembered, actually, the number of patients discharged from hospitals into care homes was 14 percent down on January. The guidance was changed to reflect the epidemic and that guidance was available to care homes and of course since the care homes action plan began, we have seen a sharp reduction in the number of deaths including care homes.”

Boris declined to crumble. But it was when he asked Starmer to abandon his “slightly negative tone” that the Labour leader missed his moment, seeming in his halting delivery – “34,000 deaths is negative, of course I’m going to ask about that and quite right too” – to slightly trip over his words at just the moment his fans will have been on the edge of their seats expecting him to slam Boris.

Starmer then looked like the QC who had fluffed his moment in court.

By the end, when the Prime Minister has the last word answering the final of six questions from the leader of the opposition, Boris was celebrating, and able to fall back on wittering again, saying “NHS” (“our fantastic NHS”) as many times as possible in 30 seconds.

Does any of this – PMQs I mean, not life in general, matter? Yes, it does, in its way, because PMQs has in the televised era helped make the Westminster and Whitehall weather. This does not mean that victory at PMQs equates to victory at a subsequent general election. William Hague regularly defeated Blair at these encounters but it made no difference in the end. Michael Howard whacked Blair most memorably by pointing out that he, Howard, was a grammar school boy and would take no lessons from a public school boy. Howard gave Tories – deemed to be out for ever between 1997 and 2003 – something to cheer about again.

Starmer is fascinating to watch. He’s an odd blend of contradictions – a bit brittle, at points cool to the point of ice cold as Blair was yet without Harold Wilson or Blair’s gift for the rapid improvised response. Starmer is clearly a nervous performer with default setting switched to robotic. If he is to get better at this he will need more rehearsal and knockabout with a comedian or two – there are several in the shadow cabinet who can help.

The best question of day from the backbenches came from Conservative Richard Drax. He noted that sensible France has started blocking the attempted takeover by the Chinese Communist Party – sorry, takeover by Chinese firms – of French defence firms at risk of going bust in the deep recession now underway.

Shouldn’t, Johnson was asked, the British government copy the French move? Drax included a good little dig on Huawei too, implying that the Prime Minister will obviously now be changing his policy of allowing the Chinese tech giant to be involved in building the British 5G network.

Tory MPs are on a mission on Huawei and policy towards China more generally. There know they have Johnson and the “securocrats” in the establishment on the run on this. The mood is for disengagement, with the new Tory grouping, the China Research Group (like the European Research Group, but calmer and about China rather than Brexit) well-organised and firing out missiles every day via email and highly-effective briefings. If Boris ever had the votes in the Commons to carry on trying to play both ends off against the middle on China policy, he doesn’t have the votes  since the Chinese Communist Party exported Covid-19.

In response to Drax, Boris stumbled about a bit, returning to the inexact, burbling approach that let him down in the PMQs of the previous two weeks, before admitting with a smile that he will be making announcements on this stuff in the weeks to come.

The Prime Minister had more than survived the Starmer assault and in pressing his opponent demonstrated that the new Labour leader lacks agility when pressure is applied.

The upshot in the aftermath will be a spot of rapid role reversal. Last week, the Number 10 line following the marmalisation of their man was that “no-one watches PMQs, anyway.” This week, after today’s fascinating encounter, it will be Team Starmer saying “no-one watches PMQs.”