LONDON (Labour Buzz) - A new session of parliament, a new Labour leader and an entirely new format known as a virtual PMQs, there was a lot to pick out of Kier Starmer’s first appearance at the dispatch box. It was his first chance to use his finely honed legal expertise to interrogate the government and he didn’t disappoint.
Virtual PMQs
Firstly, there was the somewhat surreal picture of a nearly empty chamber with most MPs choosing to join via video link. The platform of choice was Zoom, a platform which has become infamous for its serious security issues and questionable handling of data. So, it’s good to see the decision making at the top is maintaining its own high standards.
The net result was a chance to play Through the Keyhole into the homes of MPs demonstrating varying degrees of taste. There were lots of bookshelves, fine art, or in some cases no decoration whatsoever.
It also meant that the chamber had an eerie, quiet feel to it, almost like a court room. It was a natural environment for the former director of public prosecution and left Dominic Raab playing the lamb to the slaughter.
And slaughter it very much turned out to be. He was quiet, he was understated and much less aggressive than you might usually expect a leader of the opposition to be, especially when he had so much material at its disposal. The Government came into this PMQs on target to have Europe’s highest death rate and facing questions over their failure to reply to emails from companies desperate to provide the NHS with protective equipment.
Raab might have been expecting a barrage. What he got instead was a performance which was forensic but lethal. He hit the Government time and time again, over their failure to provide an accurate figure for deaths to their failure to ramp up testing and the rising scandal of care home deaths. Raab had no answers and Starmer made sure people knew it.
“I’m disappointed we don’t have a number for social care workers [who have died] and I put the first secretary on notice that I’ll ask the same question again next week and hopefully we can have a better answer,” said Starmer.
The quiet format was a world a way from the usual spectacle and robbed the Conservatives of their biggest weapon: drowning out any questions with jeers. It was tailor made to Starmer’s precise and analytical style and forced Raab to come back with detail and substance which, for a man who was surprised by the existence of Calais, was always going to be a struggle.
(Written by Tom Cropper, edited by Michael O'Sullivan)