The whips had been beating the bushes around the Palace of Westminster and, unlike last week, the benches behind Boris Johnson were well stocked for prime minister's questions.
“I see they’ve turned up this week, prime minister,” Keir Starmer sneered.
It was the first of a series of jeering remarks from Starmer, which were no less effective for the fact that they were obviously scripted and thoroughly rehearsed. Two days after Johnson’s disastrous Peppa Pig speech to the unsmiling captains of British industry, being prepared didn’t seem to be such a bad look.
Starmer's purpose during PMQs was to punch relentlessly at the bruise of the government's plan for social care, which it made less generous this week and which exposed the difference in outlook between Johnson and his chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak. The fact that Johnson's allies are blaming Sunak for hostile briefings after the Peppa Pig speech made the target all the more attractive.
‘Working-class dementia tax’
Starmer blamed them both for what he dubbed “a working-class dementia tax” which involved poorer people paying higher taxes so the better-off could avoid paying for social care.
“During their working lives, they will pay much more tax in national insurance, while those living off wealth are protected. When they retire, they face having to sell their home, when the wealthiest will not have to do so,” he said.
“It is a classic con game – a Covent Garden pickpocketing operation. The prime minister is the front man, distracting people with wild promises and panto speeches, while his chancellor dips his hand in their pocket.”
Sunak sat next to Johnson, the picture of innocence, but the prime minister's advisers blame the chancellor's team for disloyal briefings going back months. When Dominic Cummings merged the chancellor's advisers into a single team with the prime minister's, Sajid Javid resigned fearing the treasury would come under the sway of Number 10.
Spendthrift instincts
Under Sunak, the reverse has happened as the merged team has identified more with the chancellor’s fretting about the public finances than with Johnson’s spendthrift instincts. Amid reports that Conservative backbenchers have started submitting letters to the 1922 Committee calling for a leadership election, Starmer revelled in Johnson’s discomfort.
“The prime minister’s routine is falling flat. His chancellor is worried that people are getting wise,” he said.
“His backbenchers say that it is ‘embarrassing’ – their word. Senior people in Downing Street tell the BBC, ‘It’s just not working.’ Is everything okay, prime minister?”