The best weapon the Tories have to throw at Labour? A pair of Starmer-branded flip flops

The Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands tweets ‘flip flop’ pictures of them roughly every 30 seconds. If this is the best example they’ve got of ‘attack dog politics’, the Tories are really in trouble, writes Tom Peck

Rishi Sunak has given up, and frankly who can blame him? (AFP via Getty Images)

Nobody bothered to turn up to Prime Minister’s Questions. The benches were half empty. The order paper, which is to say the number of people slated to ask questions, wasn’t even full. And it’s not immediately clear if Rishi Sunak was there, either.

The thing about Prime Minister’s Questions is that you do have to have some answers – and he simply hasn’t got any, on any subject. To take just one: can it really be half a year since he promised to halve inflation by the end of the year, and was roundly mocked for promising to do something that was widely forecast to happen anyway?

Well, it’s not widely forecast anymore. It’s not going to happen. He was mocked six months ago for the complete lack of ambition in his “five pledges” – the others included bringing national debt down and “stopping the boats” – and despite the lack of ambition or, more accurately, the underestimation of the challenge, he’s nevertheless failing on all of them anyway.