Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of doing a “grubby deal” with Suella Braverman, as the PM took to the despatch box for his maiden PMQs today.
Sunak admitted that Braverman had “made an error of judgment,” but given that she had admitted her mistake and apologised, he was “delighted to welcome her back” to her former role as home secretary.
Although Sunak was given a good grilling by the leader of the opposition, for the first time what seemed like months, his Tory MPs obviously liked what they saw and heard of their new leader’s answers.
In comparison to his predecessor Liz Truss, Sunak’s first outing at PMQs was deemed a success all round. But his performance wasn’t without a few shaky moments.
Sunak took a beating when it came to questions about a video of him from the summer, boasting to Tory members about diverting funding away from deprived areas – which he claims was a distorted picture of what he really said – as well as putting “party first, country second”. Most notably, Starmer’s statement that he doesn’t “need to explain to the prime minister how non-dom status works, he already knows all about that.” And we can be sure that barbs about the non-dom status of Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife are not going to go away.
Sunak appeared to wriggle out of these tight moments – like Boris Johnson as a “greased piglet” – but his responses were not always wholly convincing.
Starmer, for his part, played his attack with the conviction of a PM-in-waiting. He even patriotically commended Sunak for being the first British Asian prime minister, describing the event as something that makes him “so proud to be British.”
