Keir Starmer’s theme for Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was the government’s imminent and inevitable U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to pay for help with energy bills. The Labour leader started by asking if the prime minister was for or against it. Boris Johnson responded by saying: “The right honourable gentleman struggled to define what a woman was.”
This is taking deflection to a new and higher level. It is disgraceful, naturally, but it also has to be recognised as ruthless and effective. For all the apparent chaos of the prime minister’s non sequiturs, he actually shows a remarkable message discipline, crowbarring his emotion-based talking points into a forum notionally designed to hold him to account. He did it with the line about Starmer using his time as Director of Public Prosecutions “failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can see”, at PMQs in February.
This latest device was just as cynical. The only connection with Starmer’s question was “not knowing if you are for or against something”. Johnson’s reply in effect admitted he didn’t know what he thought about a central issue of economic policy, but that didn’t matter because Starmer didn’t know what he thought about something completely different.
