PMQs Review: Mr Sunak really is very bad at politics

Cheers rang out from the Conservative back benches as their hero walked into the Commons chamber at 12pm today. It was unclear whether they were ironic cheers, or not. Here he was, the leader who had the previous day used up pretty much his entire political capital to park a humiliating defeat over his Rwanda deal for a few weeks! Hoorah! The man who would proceed, over the next half hour, to showcase the tin ear and general political ineptness that will almost certainly lead his party to overwhelming defeat next year! Huzzah! It was all very through the looking glass.

Keir Starmer, increasingly looking and acting like he senses blood, was enjoying himself. “Christmas is a time of peace on Earth and goodwill to all,” he began. “Has anyone told the Tory Party?” He then rolled his tongue around his cheek, swung to his right and high-fived Rachel Reeves (he didn’t, but he might as well have done).

“Christmas is also a time for families and under the Conservatives we do have a record number of them,” responded Rishi Sunak. Oliver Dowden, to his right, and who presumably wrote the quip, laughed heartily. So did Kemi Badenoch, to the prime minister’s left, until, presumably, she realised he was making a joke about how under his leadership the parliamentary party had become an ungovernable rabble of factions, and immediately adopted a granite face.

Starmer then went through a list of anonymous briefings Tory MPs had given to the press over the last few days and urged them to identify themselves. “Come on, come on! Who was it that said ‘he’s a really bad politician’? Hands up! What about ‘inexperienced’, who was that? Or – now, there’s got to be some hands for this – ‘he’s got to go’?”. Sunak grinned as he responded “He should hear what they have to say about him!”, forgetting, perhaps, that MPs are supposed to say disobliging things about the other party’s leader. Their own, not so much. “They’ve obviously found the donkey for their nativity,” chortled Starmer. “The search for the three wise men may take a little longer.”

He then performed a screeching tonal u-turn. Nearly 140,000 children are going to be homeless this Christmas, he said, giving a case study of 11-year-old Liam Walker. Homeless this Christmas, Liam had written a letter to Santa, wanting his old toys out of storage and for his family “to be happy again”. The House listened in silence. What could Sunak say to him?

“If he really cared about building homes, when there was an opportunity in this House – in this House! – to back our plans to reform defective EU laws, to unlock 100,000 new homes, what did he do? What did he do? He went in front of the cameras and said one thing and came in here and blocked it! Typical shameless opportunism!” So no home for Liam this Christmas, but a hysterical rant about EU laws. It was, even by Sunak’s low standards, remarkably ill-judged.

Starmer concluded with an admittedly quite cynical final question urging the House to come together, enjoy a “happy and peaceful New Year” and have a collective rendition of Kumbaya (I paraphrase). But this softest of queries – and this was, presumably, the intention – set Sunak off again.

“We’ve delivered tax cuts for millions of working families! Boosted the national minimum wage! Recruited 50,000 more nurses! 20,000 more police officers! Improved our schools! We’ve cut the cost of net zero for those working families! We’ve cut the boat crossings by a third and we’ve halved inflation!”

By this point, the MPs behind Sunak not on the payroll buried their heads in either their order papers or phones. The cheering had stopped. What they suspected last night had been confirmed today – Rishi Sunak is very, very bad at politics.