Starmer misses a trick at PMQs

Today’s PMQs will have been a huge relief for Boris Johnson.

Just 23 minutes before the session, Dominic Cummings tweeted out a bombshell newsletter containing a litany of damaging WhatsApp messages – allegedly from the PM – including one in which he appears to describe Matt Hancock as “totally f***ing hopeless”.

The former adviser even prepared a handy guide for Keir Starmer entitled “a few simple questions to ask the PM”, which covered the government’s failures on herd immunity, PPE, care homes and testing.

But instead of these – to borrow the phrase, “oven ready” questions – Starmer chose to return to two of his most tried and tested topics: border controls and financial support.

Taking aim at the government’s delay in placing India on the red list, the Labour leader asked the PM whether he recognised that his decision to keep the borders open had contributed to the spread of the Delta variant.

Johnson hit back with the claim that Starmer was “completely wrong” because the government placed India on the red list on 23 April – two weeks before the Delta variant was designated a variant of concern on 7 May.

He said: “I think Captain Hindsight needs to adjust his retrospectroscope”.

Starmersaid this was “absurd” and pointed out that he had repeatedly urged the PM to take tougher actions on the border. He asked: “What is the Prime Minister’s explanation for the spread of the Delta variant?”

Johnson retorted: “There’s a very simple reason why the UK generally has a better understanding of the variants in this country, and that’s because we do 47 per cent of the genomic testing anywhere in the world.”

He said Starmer needed to “get his facts straight” and quoted from what he claimed was a Labour briefing saying the Delta variant was identified on 1 April. “That is not the Delta variant,” he exclaimed, “that is the Kappa variant”.  

The PM told MPs the UK has now vaccinated almost 79 per cent of the adult population – a feat he claimed would not have happened under Labour because it wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency.

The Labour leader quipped: “If the Prime Minister put as much effort into protecting our borders as he does coming up with ridiculous excuses, the country would be reopening next week.”

He called on the government to follow Labour’s proposal to “drop the traffic light system, get rid of the amber list, secure the borders and do everything possible to save the British summer”.

Moving on to the topic of financial support, Starmer said it was those in the hospitality and travel industries who were “paying the price” for the Prime Minister’s failures and asked when he would give proper support for businesses, as the Labour government was doing in Wales.

Johnson said he was “proud” of government support for businesses up and down the country, and that help would continue in the form of furlough and business rates measures.

Wrapping up the session, Starmer said the government’s response to the pandemic had shown a pattern of being “too slow”, “indecisive,” and “under delivering”. He said that everyone wanted restrictions to be over, but that the PM’s “indecision at the borders has blown it”.

Johnson retorted that the Labour leader “can’t decide what he thinks from one week to the next” – and accused him of changing his stance on borders. He said the government is “getting on” with delivering its “cautious but irreversible roadmap to freedom”.