LONDON (Labour Buzz) - If you write the foreword to the Ministerial code, it’s a good idea that you practice what you preach. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that some bright spark will come back with them and humiliate you on live television. That’s exactly what happened to Boris Johnson in this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
Bullying
“There must be no bullying, no harassment, no leaking, no misuse of taxpayers money, no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.” So wrote Johnson in the Ministerial Code. Starmer’s opening question was simple but poisonous:
"How many of those promises does the PM think his ministers have kept?"
Johnson had the look of someone who had an inkling about what was coming. He should. In the last week, he had let his Home Secretary off for bullying, seen leaks springing from every department and seen questions about dodgy PPE contracts which wouldn’t look out of place in the most corrupt of third-world dictatorships.
However, there’s a difference in seeing the train coming and being able to get out of the way.
Sure enough, Starmer moved first onto Priti Patel who as the ‘now-former’ adviser on standards concluded ‘was in breach of the ministerial code’ for her bullying behaviour.
What message did it say? Starmer wondered, that the same adviser had resigned by the Home Secretary was still in post?
“The reality is that any other Prime Minister would have sacked her and any other Home Secretary would have resigned,” Starmer said.
Johnson tried gamely to make a virtue of standing by his Home Secretary and instead attacked Starmer for ‘bashing her’.
No leaking
So, with bullying being chalked up as a no Starmer moved onto to the question of leaking. This was a short and rather swift win for Starmer as even the most ardent of Tory supporters would have to admit government departments aren’t running the tightest of ships.
From plans for a second lockdown to spending policies, almost nothing this government plans makes it to announcement time without appearing in the press.
“Who is leaking this vital information?” Starmer asked?
Johnson dismissed these claims as ‘trivia’. He then tried to turn his attack on Keir Starmer for Jeremy Corbyn, and almost instantly regretted it as he found himself on the end of the best put down of the day from the Speaker. Lyndsey Hoyle who is fast becoming something of a star in PMQs reminded him that it was Prime Minister’s Questions not the Leader of the Opposition’s questions.” When Johnson tried to protest, he was quickly slapped down.
“I think I’ll make that decision Prime Minister. Thankfully, we’ve got the sound, we don’t want to lose it,” referring to Johnson’s loss of connection yesterday.
Starmer pointed out that there was a clear difference between the two cases. “While he was tackling the difficult issues in his party,” Johnson is not. The decision not to expel Jeremy Corbyn was down to the NEC, not Starmer, who had done everything within his power by removing the whip from Corbyn for three months. Johnson, on the other hand, has an enormous amount of power to demote or fire Priti Patel, none of which he has taken.
Anyway, we all digress, and getting back to his original question Starmer said:
“I take it from his answer that he has no idea. That’s another in the no column.
Taxpayers money
To giggles around the house, Starmer took him onto the next point: ‘no misuse of taxpayer money’.
The problem, said Starmer, is even worse than first thought.
According to a response from the Cabinet office it has purchased 180 million pieces of unusable equipment rather than the 50 million previously thought. A report from the National Audit Office identified a further £214 million for face masks for the NHS that it can’t use.
“How many hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money has been wasted on equipment which can’t be used?” Starmer asked.
Johnson had no answer leaving Starmer to conclude: “either the PM doesn’t know how much money is being wasted or he doesn’t care.
Conflicts of interest
Next up was conflicts of interest and there has been plenty of that in the last week or so. We learned that suppliers with political connections were ten times more likely to get Government contracts and the Health Secretary had appointed one of his closest friends to a key advisory role. This friend is also a major shareholder in a firm which lobbies the government on behalf of its clients and some of them have secured tens of millions of pounds of contracts during the pandemic. Was he aware of this apparent conflict of interest?
Johnson restates his rather desperate attack claiming it reveals a ‘deep underlying hatred of the private sector’.
“No one’s knocking the private sector,” Starmer said, “he’s knocking the taxpayer.”
He compared the Prime Minister’s attitude to spraying public money on contracts that don’t deliver to his friends and pay rises for front line workers. Chancellor Rishi Sunak had been under fire earlier in the week for mooting a public sector pay freeze.
“If you’ve got a hotline to ministers, you get a blank check but if you’re on the front line tackling COVID you’re picking up the bill.”
He urged him to give them the pay rise they obviously deserve.
Johnson rather ludicrously tried to defend himself with the Government’s track record on free school meals and that the government understands how to run the economy, forgetting that the UK has the biggest recession in Europe, the biggest death toll in Europe and had to be shamed by a footballer into feeding hungry children.
Sinking ship
More than a few people have noted how run-down Johnson is looking these days. Being Prime Minister is turning out to be much harder work than he’d ever thought and for a man who notoriously dislikes hard work, such as turning up to Cobra meetings, that’s a big deal. Small wonder that he’s rumoured to be packing the gig in by Spring.
Today, though, was dreadful even by his standards. When pressed to condemn bullying he accused Starmer of hating Priti Patel.
When asked about wasting taxpayers money he claimed Starmer hated Britain and when asked to condemn cronyism he claimed he ‘hated the private sector’.
What made things even worse was that Starmer was able to pummel Johnson with his own words. On bullying, leaking, wasting public money and conflicts of interests it was, as Starmer said, ‘a clean sweep’. In short, it was one of the biggest kickings ever seen in Westminster.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)