PMQs Review: Starmer's honeymoon is over, after one and a fifth Liz Trusses

Today was Keir Starmer’s second Prime Minister’s Questions. It’s worth dwelling on that, since the right wing press are already attacking him for blaming the nation’s ills on the Tory Party, and asking why, in the two months he’s had, Starmer hasn’t sorted everything out. He’s had 62 days, or one and a fifth Liz Trusses.

Starmer is so new to the job that on no fewer than three occasions he referred to Rishi Sunak as “the prime minister”. It is possible that Starmer wishes to establish a convention that the holder of that office gets to keep the title for life, like the US president, but it is more likely he forgot that’s now him. “I don’t think the prime minister is really inviting me to put that to one side…,” he said the third and final time before the noise opposite reminded him.

The dynamic had changed slightly since Starmer’s first PMQs, when Sunak joshed at his own electoral incompetence before kindly offering the new PM his unqualified support should he wish to bomb another country without parliamentary approval. Today he remembered his job, if temporary, is to oppose, and fortunately Labour have now actually done something.

“Governing is about making choices and the new prime minister has made a choice,” said Sunak. “He has chosen to take the winter fuel allowance away from low-income pensioners and give that money to certain unionised workforces in inflation-busting pay rises. So can I just ask the prime minister, why did he choose train drivers over Britain’s vulnerable pensioners?” (A reminder, by the way, that Sunak really, really doesn’t like trains, scrapping HS2, never travelling by rail and once weirdly toying with the idea of stripping wifi from them.)

Starmer’s response is worth studying because you’re going to be hearing it a lot. He used it several times in this session. You’ll be hearing it at the 2034 general election. It is entirely feasible Stephen Hawking heard the phrase “black hole” fewer times in his 76 long years than the British electorate is going to hear it over the next few.

“Our first job was to audit the books,” Starmer intoned sternly. “And what we found was a £22 billion black hole. Richard Hughes, the chair of the OBR, was very clear, he described it as one of the largest year overspends against forecasts outside of the pandemic – his words. So we’ve had to take tough decisions to stabilise the economy and repair the damage, including targeting winter fuel payments whilst protecting pensioners.”

There were black holes everywhere. There was a black hole when Rebecca Paul, a plummy new Tory MP for Reigate asked specifically about pensioners in her constituency. The black hole was also invoked, albeit in a slightly more tin-eared fashion, when Lib Dem leader Ed Davey asked about its impact on ‘Norman’, a carer for a wife suffering MS and Alzheimer’s. To Starmer’s right, Angela Rayner bore the expression of a woman who had just been told her budgie had been shot.

Elsewhere, matters were quieter. The fact there is such a whopping Labour majority – plus the Tories’ more vocal, Red Wall types were largely swept away – means the bulk of PMQs are broadly unchallenging questions from Starmer’s own side.

Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth), a new Labour MP with a name like a parody of a Guardian Weekend columnist, asked about the price of Oasis tickets, something which is now apparently the business of government. “Firstly, it’s great that Oasis are back together!” said Starmer in full Blair tribute act mode. “I think from what I’ve determined about half the country has probably been queuing for tickets over the weekend!” He then committed to doing something about the fact that it is expensive to watch popular bands live.

Finally, a word about Pete Wishart, the SNP MP and former member of Runrig, a band whose gig ticket price never troubled Hansard. Wishart had long been seen as a fairly convivial presence on the green benches, but is increasingly going down the George Galloway path with age, as was displayed by his question today.

“After 14 miserable years of the worst Tory government in modern times, the best this prime minister can offer the British people is ‘things can only get worse’,” he said. “Well, for him and his calamitous opinion ratings that’s probably true. But why does he think he has such an unprecedented fall in his unpopularity? Is it his attacks on the pensioners? Is it leaving children in poverty? Is it the reemergence of Labour cronyism? Or is that HIS AUSTERITY IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE CONSERVATIVE VARIETY?”

Starmer was unfazed, pointing to the much diminished SNP presence in the House. “It’s a long way up and there’s far less of them, so I don’t think we need any lectures,” he responded.

Still, that’s the honeymoon over. 62 days, or one and a fifth Liz Trusses.