Keir Starmer was right to avoid the question of the government breaking the law at PMQs

I’m beginning to think that there is a bigger problem with the Brexit-voting northern working class: for them, a London lawyer is not a good thing to be, says John Rentoul

(Parliament Live)

A cabinet minister told the Commons yesterday that the government intended to break international law, but the leader of the opposition decided not to mention it today.

Quite right too. The rule of law is important, but the issue on which it turns is an obvious trap for Keir Starmer. No one – and I mean that almost literally – understands the problem of exit summary declarations for goods going from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. All that most people know is that it’s something to do with Brexit.

Which means it is about the two subjects that Starmer doesn’t want to talk about at Prime Minister’s Questions: that he is a lawyer; and that he tried to reverse the EU referendum.

When Boris Johnson first brought up the “lawyer” theme in the Commons, accusing Starmer of being an unprincipled flip flopper, arguing one brief one week and a different one the next, I thought he was doing Starmer a favour. I was puzzled when No 10 people said their plan was to paint the Labour leader as a “Remainer lawyer”. Won’t that just draw attention to one of Starmer’s great advantages, which is that he had a serious job before entering parliament?

Well, that works for some voters, but I’m beginning to think that there is a bigger problem with the Brexit-voting northern working class: for them, a London lawyer is not a good thing to be. And the combination of being a London lawyer and someone who tried to cancel the Brexit referendum is electoral poison in Red Wall seats.

No wonder Starmer is afraid of his own legal shadow. Fortunately for him, he had an alternative subject of more immediate concern to most voters, namely the difficulty of getting coronavirus tests.

He did a good job of asking all six questions about that. His tone was plain and factual: “I just want it fixed; I don’t need to have an argument,” he said, as the prime minister accused him of undermining the public’s confidence in NHS Test and Trace. Mentioning the NHS was a low trick, invoking the national religion in the way a dodgy vicar might praise the Lord while embezzling parish funds.

Starmer’s final question was a plea for an “honest answer”. If the prime minister said, “I know something’s gone wrong in the past couple of weeks; I’ve looked into it; here’s my plan,” Starmer said he would support him. 

As he warmed to his theme, Starmer overshot slightly. Why will the prime minister not admit he’s incompetent, he asked, winding himself up for this ringing declaration: “This government lacks even basic incompetence.”

Johnson seized on his misspeaking with alacrity: “He was on the money when he said this government lacks incompetence.”

The prime minister pointed out that Starmer had avoided the question of the internal market bill (which Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, admitted broke international law): “A great ox once again has stood on his tongue.” Knowing that Starmer had asked his last question and wouldn’t be able to respond, he said Starmer wanted to “take us back into the EU”.

That is how the argument will unfold in the next few days: Starmer will call Johnson incompetent; Johnson will call him a Remainer lawyer. The British people may believe both accusations are true. The question is which matters more, and the answer is almost certainly that people care more about effective control of the virus.