Yahoo Finance Johnson's moment of truth offers gnomic relief in sub-par PMQs
Maybe everyone knew that all eyes were on Washington. Both to watch out for any last-minute hissy fits or dodgy pardons from Donald Trump and to follow the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Or maybe Keir Starmer has finally got fed up with never having his questions answered by Boris Johnson and has given up trying. Whichever it was, this was one of the more low-key and least satisfying prime minister’s questions.
Even the tech seemed to be having a day off in sympathy. The SNP leader, Ian Blackford, had his second question delayed as his Zoom connection died. The Tory MP Nicola Richards couldn’t work out how to unmute herself, and by the time she did, she was unable to hear what was going on in the chamber. She wasn’t missing much. Neil O’Brien couldn’t work out how to switch off his phone, and the sound of children shouting could be picked up on at least two other remote questions. These were the biggest dramas of the day, missed only by the increasingly affected Desmond Swayne, who appeared to remain unconscious for most of the session.
Starmer started promisingly by reminding Boris, who had only bothered to mention Biden, that the inauguration of Harris as the first woman – and a woman of colour at that – as vice-president was an equally historic moment. He then went on to challenge Johnson on the number of criminal investigations that had been put in jeopardy and how many files on convicted criminals had been deleted after the cock-up with the police national computer 10 days ago.
“We don’t know,” said Boris, in what may have been one of his first honest and truthful answers he had ever given at PMQs. A rare moment, which on another day might have drawn greater surprise. Still, Keir persisted with a further three questions to demand exact figures on the data lost – something over 400,000 files – and a time when the data would be restored. Manually, if necessary.
“That depends on how long it takes,” Johnson replied. Gnomic, certainly, but possibly only the second time he had given an honest and truthful answer. He didn’t know much about the progress of the data loss and didn’t really seem that bothered by it. His main expression was one of surprise that Starmer was making such a big deal over something he regarded as fairly trivial.
You got the feeling that Starmer would have happily gone on about the police national computer system for much longer – these things probably matter more to a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service – but he belatedly switched to comments the home secretary had made the night before. Apparently, Priti Patel – clearly wanting to get her defence in early for any forthcoming inquiry – had said she had called for all borders to be closed last March, but had been overruled by the prime minister. A decision that might have cost tens of thousands of lives.
Ah, said Johnson. He couldn’t remember Labour calling for borders to be shut back in March – carefully ignoring the fact that Starmer didn’t become leader of the party till April, and that the scientific data wasn’t widely shared with the opposition – and he announced proudly that the UK now had some of the strictest border controls. What he forgot to mention was that these new controls had only just come into operation this month and that it had been his natural instinct throughout the pandemic to do as little as possible.
By now, though, Starmer had used up his six questions and was wondering why he hadn’t put his time to better use by asking why the UK had the highest coronavirus death rate in the world, how much supply of the vaccine we actually had, and why the rollout was so slow in some parts of the country. So Boris was free to do what he always does at the end: abuse the Labour leader for being “Captain Hindsight” and a “weathervane”.
So much for the “kind and civil” language Johnson had been talking up on Monday. Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s spokesperson, later excused Boris on the grounds that his words were not “unpleasant” but a “description”. Just think of the accurate descriptions Starmer would now be free to use, if he wanted to lower the tone. Sometimes you just long for him to shake off his leash and say what he really thinks. A mess. A shambles. A liar. A narcissistic charlatan. Pathologically unfaithful. And that’s all before we get on to his mishandling of the pandemic crisis. That would certainly liven up PMQs.
Blackford dragged up Theresa May’s Daily Mail article in which she had accused Johnson of abandoning the UK’s right to the moral high ground of global politics by threatening to abandon the international aid budget, but Boris pretty much ignored this. Moral questions have never unduly detained him, not even ones of genocide, as he sidestepped his government’s refusal to adopt the Lords’ amendment to the trade bill that specifically addressed this issue. People just had to trust him to do the right thing, he said. Even though most people have learned never to take Johnson at his word.
No one looked bothered when the session ended. It had been a sub-par performance all round, something that always plays to Johnson’s strengths. But for the rest of the afternoon all eyes would be on the US, where integrity and decency were making a welcome comeback. It would be nice to think the same could happen here one day.
