Keir Starmer needs catch-up lessons in how to ask Boris Johnson questions

The Labour leader seems to be going backwards in his attempts to hold the prime minister to account in the Commons, writes John Rentoul

‘Let me take this very slowly for the PM,’ said Keir Starmer (Parliament TV)

The prime minister ought to have been in trouble today. This was the first time that the Labour leader had the chance to ask him about the resignation of Sir Kevan Collins, the government’s adviser on catch-up in schools. Sir Kevan did the principled thing when Boris Johnson refused to devote anything like the public spending he thought was required to education recovery.

Yet Keir Starmer was unable to embarrass Boris Johnson in the slightest. In part, that is because Johnson is so shameless, as he presented himself as the champion of disadvantaged children whose parents could not afford private tuition. But an effective leader of the opposition ought to be able to expose such bold overclaiming.

Instead, Starmer was reduced to responding, “Who does he think he’s kidding?” But this was PMQs, not PMRQs, Prime Minister’s Rhetorical Questions. It seems that, just as a generation of pupils have lost out on schooling during the pandemic, Starmer’s education in the art of asking Johnson questions has gone backwards. His second question was over a minute long, a recitation of spending figures per child over different periods in different countries. It allowed Johnson to slide into generalities.

By the time he got to his fourth question, Starmer started: “Let me take this very slowly for the prime minister…” No, the House of Commons groaned inwardly. Speed up and get to the point. He had an important argument, which is that Sir Kevan had warned that the attainment gap between rich and poor children would widen if his plan were not adopted, but it was lost in the drone of words.

At one point, in the early part of his second question, Starmer mentioned in passing what might have been an effective line of inquiry. He said that he assumed it was Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, who had vetoed the spending Sir Kevan had wanted. Starmer presented Johnson as a weak prime minister who “rolls over and children lose out”. But then he lost the point in his statistical tour of comparative catch-up spending around the world.

Tension between a prime minister and their ministers, especially the chancellor, has long been a fruitful subject for pointed questions from leaders of the opposition. Johnson would have blustered dismissively, but it might have produced a twinge of discomfort as he probably does wonder whether he should have stood up to his strong chancellor.

Paradoxically, there was more edge in the exchanges between Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, and the prime minister than there was across the despatch boxes. Hoyle interrupted one of Johnson’s answers to tell him off for raising the irrelevant subject of what was in Labour’s last election manifesto – Johnson had accused Starmer of standing on a manifesto that promised to get rid of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate (which is true).

The prime minister was sufficiently needled to have the last word: “With great respect, Mr Speaker, I do think I’m entitled to draw attention to what the Labour Party stood on in the last election – they have not repudiated it.”

Unfortunately for Starmer, Hoyle has appeared to offer more effective opposition to the government this week, saying that he thought the prime minister ought to offer the Commons the chance to have a binding vote on the cut in the foreign aid budget, and in effect engineering yesterday’s emergency debate on the subject. Starmer mentioned the foreign aid cut in passing in his final question, but the question itself was about Palestine, which felt like one that was driven more by the internal politics of the Labour Party than by a genuine belief that this weekend’s G7 is a chance to restart the Middle East peace process.

As Starmer’s opinion-poll ratings go backwards, his ability to hold the prime minister to account seems to be going backwards too.