How unhappy Sir Keir Starmer looked as Rishi Sunak reproached him for halting implementation of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which is supposed to protect this country from interference by China and other foreign states.
“Why?” Sunak asked
The picture above shows the PM listening to the question. What was going through his mind? He was perhaps recalling the briefings he has received from the security services on this sensitive question, and wondering which parts of them were confidential.
He decided to take refuge in extreme brevity: “That isn’t correct.”
Brevity has its place at PMQs. This column is keen on it. One nevertheless felt the PM should have said a word or two to indicate that the Government is not going soft on China.
Sunak in his level tone urged the PM “to get up to speed on this issue”, and to give the security services the powers they need. Starmer affected to be riled, or perhaps really was riled, and retorted, “I really don’t think party-political points on security…”
The rest of the sentence was lost in a mixture of cheers and jeers, for although Sunak wished to show that the Government is treating China with undue leniency, he spoke in such a serious and measured tone that it seemed absurd to accuse him of party-political point scoring.
The Prime Minister does not appear to realise the general election is over. Again and again, he deplored the record of the Conservatives during their 14 years in government.
No one expects the new administration to have surmounted, after three months in office, every difficulty it faces.
But the PM might at least give some indication of the spirit in which it is getting to work, the direction in which it intends to go and the sort of measures it will be bringing forward.
He instead exclaimed, in reply to a question from Adrian Ramsay (Green, Waveney Valley) about the difficulty of finding a dentist in East Anglia, that “dentistry was left in a shocking state… I was shocked to hear… that is shocking”.
Not since Claude Rains played Captain Renault in Casablanca has such extravagant shock been expressed.
Starmer came prepared for party-political knockabout, and fired off pre-written answers which did not fit either the tone or the substance of the questions put to him.
“The party opposite want to get rid of maternity pay but keep hereditary peers,” he told the House. “It’s the same old Tories.”
How he wishes it was indeed the same old Tories. But ever since Disraeli, the Conservatives have tended to modernise themselves by choosing a leader who is not one of “the same old Tories”.
Sunak himself does not fit the “same old Tory” stereotype, and today exposed the PM’s vulnerability when asked serious questions.
