PMQs: What would Starmer do differently?

Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer reached a stalemate over “Freedom Day” at today’s PMQs. The PM refused to disclose the data behind his “big bang” reopening calculations while the Labour leader offered little more than face masks as a credible alternative.

The heated debate came after Johnson confirmed that most of the remaining coronavirus restrictions in England will be scrapped on 19 July – a policy that Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, said could lead to as many as 100,000 cases a day.

Homing in on this number, Starmer asked the PM what he expected the number of hospitalisations, deaths and people with long Covid to be if the estimate of 100,000 cases turns out to be accurate.

Johnson declined to give a number, saying that a “number of projections” were available from the SPI-M graphs. He admitted that the country was seeing a wave of infections because of the Delta variant but insisted “scientists are also absolutely clear that we have severed the link between infection and serious disease”.

The PM’s comments were at odds with those made by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, who said this week that the link between infection and serious disease is “weakened” but “not a completely broken link”.  

Starmer said that Johnson’s inability to provide him with the statistics “hardly inspires confidence in his plan” and retorted that case numbers were so high because the PM “let the Delta – or we can call it the Johnson variant – into the country”.

Attempting to shift the focus from his own policies to Labour’s lack of a clear position, the PM said that Starmer seemed to support opening up earlier in the week. He challenged him to clear up his position on the 19 July re-opening, asking: “Is it reckless or not?”

Laying out a position that did not differ wildly to the PM’s own, Starmer said the country should “open up in a controlled way”. He said the government should do this by “keeping baseline protections, such as masks on public transport, improving ventilation, making sure the track and trace system remains effective, and ensuring proper payments for self-isolation”.

Starmer warned that the PM could not just “wish away” the practical problems of 100,000 infections a day and pointed to self-isolation rules as the next “obvious” problem.

He asked: “What is the Prime Minister going to do to stop people deleting the NHS app because they can see precisely what he can’t see, which is that millions of them are going to be pinged this summer to self-isolate?”

The PM thanked those that were self-isolating and said the government was moving to a system of testing rather than self-isolation, because of the success of the vaccine rollout. He tried once again to get Starmer to lay out his position, before speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle intervened to remind him that the session was Prime Minister’s, rather than opposition leader’s, questions.

Asked if England was heading toward a summer of “chaos and confusion”, Johnson retorted “No”, before insisting the government was taking these difficult decisions in a “balanced way”.

He rounded off the session by telling MPs: “We inoculate, while they are invertebrates” – a phrase that will do little to reassure those who are wondering if the PM even has the data to justify the 19 July unlocking, and if he does, why he won’t share it.