Week after week the Prime Minister calls the Leader of the Opposition’s bluff and declines to be written off as a moral imbecile.
Keir Starmer asked the Prime Minister why the Home Secretary struggles “with points-based systems” in a low-key session.
The Deputy Prime Minister, who has prepared Tory leaders since Howard for PMQs, at last stepped into the limelight himself.
The new Deputy Prime Minister brands Rayner and Starmer the “Holly and Phil” of British politics, as he bats away questions on hospital waiting lists, food banks, and Brexit.
Starmer was solidly pious, but lacked the wit to score a palpable hit.
“The Prime Minister keeps entering a two-horse race and somehow finishing third”, argues Sir Keir Starmer.
“His decision to scrap housing targets is killing the dream of homeownership for a generation. Why doesn’t he admit he got it wrong, and reverse it?”
The two leaders preached to the converted by trading exaggerated insults.
The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition trade blows over the former’s family tax affairs and the latter’s pension plan.
“When our Sentencing Act ended the early release of offenders who pose a danger to the public – it was the Labour Party who voted against it.”
Labour MPs watched Starmer with the anxious air of primary school parents whose child has been miscast in the nativity play.
Burke would not have been impressed by large number of merely local concerns raised by MPs.
Labour pressed the Government on protecting women and girls, prosecuting rape and the current court backlog.
He accuses Tories of being ‘snowflake MPs waging war on free speech’; Sunak says he is indulging in “the usual political opportunism”.
The Prime Minister insists that there “is no one single lever that will solve this problem” as Starmer says traffickers are “laughing all the way to the bank”.