Keir Starmer chose the wrong day to attack the government for wasting money

The Labour leader accused Boris Johnson of ‘not knowing the value of the pound in his pocket’ at PMQs – but the line just won’t cut through, writes John Rentoul

Starmer asks the questions in parliament (Reuters TV)

I’m not saying the early success of the coronavirus vaccine is a disaster for Keir Starmer, but he didn’t deal with it well at prime minister’s questions (PMQs).

After a ritual Remembrance Day question about the problems of armed forces charities, the Labour leader asked about government spending on “communications consultants”. 

As this was an indirect reference to the £670,000 of taxpayers’ money spent on public relations consultants by Baroness Bingham, the head of the government’s vaccines taskforce, the prime minister had a reply prepared. That money included a campaign to encourage take-up of the vaccine and was “to fight the anti-vaxxers”, he said. 

Starmer had to say the vaccine was good news, but he was worried about a government that “sprays money at companies that don’t deliver”. He had come armed with facts, figures and striking examples of waste, but it was all wrong for the mood of the moment. 

The mood of the moment is that the government should do whatever it takes, spend whatever money it doesn’t have and bet the country’s future on buying vaccines before it knows whether they work. Lady Bingham has bought 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and anyway she’s off at the end of the year – so it seems a bit joyless to complain about consultants, even if the press describes them as working for a “boutique” PR outfit. 

Starmer ploughed on, complaining that, because the furlough scheme was extended only at the last minute, thousands of people had lost their jobs. “The British people are paying the price for the mistakes of the prime minister and the chancellor,” he said. 

Boris Johnson did not quite channel Margaret Thatcher, who responded to journalists’ questions about the recapture of South Georgia before the battle for the Falklands by saying: “Just rejoice at that news … rejoice.” But he said the furlough scheme was wonderful – and left unsaid the implication that everyone should be glad he had bounced Rishi Sunak into extending it all the way to March. 

Starmer quoted the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which ought to rename itself the Institute for Being Quoted as an Independent Authority in the Commons, saying that government support for the self-employed was “wasteful and badly targeted”. 

Finally, the Labour leader allowed himself a glimmer of humour. He said he’d spoken to a self-employed photographer called Chris whose business had collapsed. “He asked me to raise this with the chancellor – I’ll do the next best thing.” Labour has done well to take some of the sparkle off Sunak’s stellar reputation by focusing its attacks on him, but really cannot break through until it decides whether the government’s policies are too generous or not generous enough. 

That is why Starmer had such a poor outing today. It was Blue Peter politics: “Here is one I prepared earlier.” Labour had done some work adding up all the government’s spending on communications consultants this year. Yes, it is a disgrace, but now was not the time to use it. The old tactic of issuing a news release in the middle of PMQs – in this case adding up £130m of spending since January – fell flat as the prime minister swept it aside with the equivalent of “just rejoice at the news” of the vaccine. 

In any case, accusing the government of wasting public money (and always naming the chancellor) doesn’t work if in the same breath Starmer seems to be calling on the government to spend more. Starmer and Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, are always careful to say that public money should be better spent, or better targeted, and to avoid explicitly advocating higher spending. 

Today Starmer accused Johnson of “not knowing the value of the pound in his pocket”, but it doesn’t cut through, because the people (a) want the government to throw money at the problem and (b) assume that Labour would always spend more. 

And today, on Vaccine Boxing Day, the Labour message was even less likely to cut through. 

Call me cynical, but Starmer should have asked the prime minister about Lee Cain’s imminent promotion to No 10 chief of staff. It has absolutely nothing to do with what the voters care about, but it would have made the prime minister, and the Conservative benches behind him, squirm.