PMQs truce proves brief as Starmer goes on PR offensive
PMQs #PMQs
For a moment it seemed that peace might have broken out between the two party leaders at prime minister’s questions.
That after months of slugging it out over the government’s handling of the coronavirus, there was to be a brief period of detente as both parties allowed themselves to enjoy the possibility of an end to the nightmare.
True, Boris Johnson hadn’t been able to bring himself to congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but he and Keir Starmer had been able to agree the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trials represented real hope and that war veterans’ charities did great work and needed all the help they could get.
That’s about as long as the truce lasted, because the Labour leader then went on the attack. How come Help for Heroes got just £6m from the Treasury when the government had handed out £670k in PR contracts to the vaccine taskforce and £130m to other PR companies over the past year? Boris blustered and feigned surprise that anyone should question his government’s integrity.
Obviously it made sense to award contracts initially to friends of friends as it saved all the hassle of having to put them out to public tender. Much like appointing Tory MPs’ wives Kate Bingham and Typhoid Dido to key roles had speeded up the recruitment process for Covid jobs. Why bother to interview someone you’ve already spoken to over dinner?
Besides, Johnson continued, the £670k had proved to be money well spent because if it hadn’t been for PR consultants like the ones we had in the UK, then the drug companies would never have got anyone to participate in their trials.
Video: Emily Thornberry says government ‘sucked up’ to Trump and got nothing in return (The Independent)
Emily Thornberry says government ‘sucked up’ to Trump and got nothing in return
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It didn’t appear to have occurred to him that this was a job most interns could have done in under a day. Just a quick, no frills 30-second government information film recorded on a mobile phone and broadcast on all channels at prime time (almost certainly at no cost) asking for volunteers to take part in vaccine trials would probably have hoovered up at least 100,000 willing applicants. Hell, I got a request via one of my Covid apps and signed up on the spot.
But let’s for a minute consider the possibility that no one would have thought of a public service information film. In which case, a few billboards with some choice slogans should have done the trick. “Would you like the chance to help save a member of your family from Covid-19?” might have hit the spot. Or if that wasn’t hard-hitting enough, then just play a bit dirty with: “How many of your friends and family are you prepared to watch get ill or die before Christmas next year?” That should get people calling in.
See, that wasn’t so hard. And because I’m feeling in a giving mood, I’ll let the government have that for mates’ rates of just £150k. Just send it to the usual offshore account.
Starmer wasn’t prepared to let Johnson get away with that kind of waffle and started talking about knowing the value of the pound in your pocket. Shades of Harold Wilson there. Keir then went on to ask just how many face masks the private contractor Ayanda had delivered for £150m (the answer: none) and whether an extra £374m handed out to Randox, the company that recalled 750,000 of its unused testing kits earlier this summer, was money well spent?
At which point Boris went off on a long ramble about boxing gloves that didn’t land a knockout blow – most of us were under the impression that the whole point of the vaccine was that it would deliver a knockout blow and life could return near enough to normal – and to accuse Starmer of just being against private business as a matter of principle.
Now it was the Labour leader’s turn to look bemused. Nobody had anything against private business. He just wanted to know that what he was getting actually worked and offered value for money.
By now Starmer appeared bored by Johnson – a feeling shared by many in the chamber: the man who was supposed to be the great communicator who could reach out to the public has turned out to have the repertoire of an emotionally stunted Bullingdon Club boy – and used his last three questions to address the chancellor, the man he regards as the prime minister-in-waiting.
“I know he’s not here,” Keir reminded everyone, “so I suppose you are the next best thing.” That putdown stung Boris – a narcissistic wound too far – and he never really recovered. He had no answer to the Labour leader’s accusations that lives, jobs and money could have been saved if thegovernment had followed both his and Sage’s advice and acted more decisively.
There was just time for Labour’s Angela Eagle to ask Johnson if he had any words for Donald Trump and to give him a second chance to congratulate Biden. This time Boris didn’t sidestep the issue. He referred to Trump dismissively as “the previous president” – loyalty and Boris are not close bedfellows and he can spot any lame duck other than himself – and after a few token words about getting on with any president, he went on to say how much he had enjoyed talking to Biden about Cop26. Curiously, Brexit seems to have been not mentioned in the conversation.
And that was that. It hadn’t been a vintage PMQs but they seldom are these days. Boris knows he’s going to come out of the half-hour session looking a little shabbier than before and his only goal is to muddy the waters and keep the damage to a bare minimum. And he’d just about managed it.
His expectations of himself are now as low as those of his own backbenchers, who have come to dread his public performances. It’s one thing for Johnson to embarrass himself; they had learned to live with that. It was quite another to embarrass the entire government.