Sunak couldn’t say it, so one of his backbenchers did: Boris is a busted flush

The former PM was openly mocked by his own side during Prime Minister’s Questions as Tories said enough’s enough, writes John Rentoul

Johnson’s boosterism has turned into vapourism; the supposed vote-winning, life-enhancing qualities of ‘the former member for Uxbridge’ have turned into a vote-losing, lifeblood-sucking neediness (Getty)

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Keir Starmer wanted to embarrass Rishi Sunak by saying he was responsible for approving Boris Johnson’s honours list. Sunak was indeed embarrassed, as he squirmed and said as blandly as he could that he had just “followed convention” in allowing his predecessor’s resignation list to go through.

Starmer couldn’t quite hit the popular mood, because he was too absorbed in signalling his own virtue. We can tell he really doesn’t like the former prime minister because he called him “Johnson” instead of “the former member for Uxbridge”. The Labour leader still needs “Johnson” as a stick to beat the government with. Sunak fended off the blows as best he could, by pointing out Labour had nominated people of whom he disapproved, such as Tom Watson and Shami Chakrabarti.

The prime minister obviously wanted to say that Johnson had nothing to do with him, and that he wanted him, in the words of Tory MP Tim Loughton, to “shut up and go away”. But he couldn’t, so he had a go at Ed Miliband instead.