Keir Starmer failed to make Boris Johnson pay for his lockdown U-turn at PMQs

Reversing the government’s policy is never as damaging as it seems if it ends up with the position that the opposition demanded, writes John Rentoul

Starmer in the Commons on Wednesday (UK Parliament)

Keir Starmer arrived for prime minister’s questions like a prize fighter ready to bask in the applause of the crowd after his opponent had knocked himself out in the pre-match warm-up. But Boris Johnson was miraculously still there, and fended off the Labour leader’s attacks with ease.  

It just goes to prove the old political law that a U-turn is never as damaging as it seems if you end up with the position that the opposition demanded. Over the weekend, the prime minister made what appeared to be a humiliating retreat, adopting the very policy Starmer had advocated, and which Johnson had described as “disastrous” only 10 days earlier.  

Starmer tried to avoid gloating, which would not have been decorous on such a sombre occasion, but because he couldn’t disagree with the lockdown, all he could do was claim that it would have been shorter if it had been brought in when he first called for it on 13 October. He presented himself as someone who followed the science, which is what Johnson claims to do. “I looked at the evidence,” Starmer said. “I don’t buy the argument that the facts suddenly changed.”

Johnson was able to sweep these claims aside as cavilling about the past, while he was focused on a future which held out the possibility of new kinds of mass testing.  

Never mind that the prime minister has offered false hopes of technological fixes just around the corner many times before during this pandemic: he managed to sound as if he was striking a balance between difficult options in the hope of a better tomorrow.  

At this point, Starmer blundered. He tried to get the prime minister to admit that he might extend the lockdown when it expired on 2 December. Would it continue if the level of infections was still rising by then, Starmer asked. Johnson’s policies may lie about him in ruins, but he has not lost his political instinct. He wasn’t going to fall for that one. He is worried about his own MPs voting against the government this afternoon, and knows he cannot allow any suggestion that he expects the lockdown to last a second longer than the 28 days. So he emphasised again that it would end on 2 December, come what may. That left Starmer looking as if he was advocating a longer lockdown, which is not where he should have been, having scored such a tactical victory over the prime minister.  

Johnson realised he had got away with it, and was therefore free to have some fun – sombre occasion or not – at Labour’s expense. He suggested that Starmer should “take a leaf out of Tony Blair’s book”, pointing out that the former Labour leader’s article in a Conservative newspaper today was “broadly supportive” of the government’s policy – which forced an awkward smile out of Starmer.  

The smile disappeared when Johnson added: “Tony Blair would not have spent four years in the shadow cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.” Accusing Starmer of being a sub-Marxist associate of Corbyn’s is never going to work with the voting public, but it makes Labour MPs squirm and raises morale on the Tory side of the Commons.  

What should have been a victory lap for the Labour leader had turned into another day at the office for the prime minister. 

I’m sure this isn’t true, but it almost looked as if Starmer was being ineffective against Johnson on purpose, wanting to keep him in office for as long as possible. We know that the whole Labour machine is slowly turning, like a large battleship, to face Rishi Sunak, the opponent they actually expect to fight at the next election.  

It was almost as if Starmer was not addressing the prime minister in front of him, but the next prime minister, who was in the chamber, making a public show of a united front, intently studying his papers on the bench two metres to Johnson’s left.