Keir Starmer’s first prime minister’s questions: Four things we learnt
In his first PMQs as PM, Keir Starmer criticised his predecessors and rival parties, while Rishi Sunak focused on Ukraine, avoiding direct attacks, and the SNP challenged Starmer on Labour’s internal issues, revealing ongoing tensions.
TL;DR | Highlights from this story
● PMQs is crucial for defending positions but often lacks substantive answers.
● In his first PMQs as PM, Keir Starmer emphasised inherited issues to deflect opposition attacks and justify slow reforms.
● Rishi Sunak’s initial approach focused on unity over Ukraine, avoiding direct confrontation with Starmer.
I f you want real, substantive answers to a question, prime minister’s questions is not the place to be. But if you want to see how politicians defend their positions and hold others to account, it is must-see politics.
Positions can be strengthened or damaged. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, for example, owed his downfall partly to poor performances in his role questioning Tony Blair.
The key players take the event very seriously indeed. Teams carry out briefings and rehearse possible answers. Lists of the MPs asking questions are examined to work out what might be coming.
The preparation time involved was one of the reasons why Tony Blair decided in 1997 to move from two short question sessions a week to one longer session on a Wednesday. As author Tom Hamilton puts it, for the prime minister and opposition leader, PMQs “carries a greater risk of humiliation than any other regular event in their diary”.
Keir Starmer’s first PMQs since becoming prime minister was far from rambunctious. The Conservative opposition were in no mood for a fight. But there were signs of what we can expect in the weeks and months ahead in parliament. Here are four things we learnt from the exchanges.
1. We’ll be hearing a lot about the ‘mess’ Starmer inherited
It is always interesting to see which lines the prime minister settles on. We heard attack lines about inheriting 14 years of mess. The prime minister wants to use every chance to emphasise problems created by his predecessors. We saw Blair take this approach when following John Major and Margaret Thatcher. Cameron did it when replacing Labour in 2010.
This line works in two ways. It can limit the opposition’s ability to attack as they know what is coming back. It also helps persuade supporters when there are worries about speed of action. Starmer may be attempting to lay the foundations for arguing that it will take more than one term to sort things out.
These sort of lines have a surprisingly long shelf life. Government audits and select committee inquiries will continue to uncover the record of the previous government, potentially for years to come. Each will provide fresh excuses for blaming the old regime.
Starmer also used PMQs to attack the Scottish National Party (a rival when it comes to the 2026 Scottish parliament elections) and the Green Party, which took votes from Labour in 2024. Campaign season never really ends.
In the case of the SNP, Labour hopes to win, or at least become the biggest party, in the Scottish parliament and so needs to argue that the SNP can’t govern well there. This is why Starmer raised the SNP’s record on child poverty when questioned about his own policies in that area.
In the case of the Greens, Labour wants to argue that what they say is not what they do. Starmer called out Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay for talking up environmental protection while opposing “vital clean energy infrastrucure” in his own constituency.
— Keir Starmer used PMQs to attack the Scottish National Party via its leader in Westminster, Stephen Flynn MP.
2. Sunak is taking a different approach – for now
Using attack lines is not always possible, however. In his first PMQs as opposition leader Rishi Sunak took an approach that made political knockabout impossible. He focused almost entirely on questioning the prime minister on a topic that unites them: support for Ukraine. His sombre tone was matched in Starmer’s responses, and at times, the exchanges verged on boring.
This may well have appeared to raise the tone, but it also denied Starmer the opportunity to land any blows on his weakened predecessors. Perhaps he didn’t need to, but he must have regretted not being able to use his guaranteed “final say” more directly.
— Rishi Sunak as the leader of the opposition.
3. The SNP won’t let diminished numbers hold it back
Despite now heading a much smaller team of MPs, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn proved he still intends to make noise at PMQs. Where Sunak avoided difficult questions, Flynn went straight for Starmer’s weak spot by questioning him on the previous night’s Labour rebellion. Starmer suspended seven MPs for voting against the government by supporting the SNP’s call to end the two-child benefit limit and Flynn wasted no time in reminding him of it.
One of the arts of PMQs is predicting questions and coming up with responses that are actually attacks on the questioner. Starmer will have expected Flynn to accuse him of refusing to act on child poverty and had a response ready about child poverty figures in Scotland.
While these are useful facts in highlighting SNP failures, they don’t properly answer the question. And given that other parties in Westminster are very focused on this issue – as well as many of his own MPS – a reference to Scotland may provide a way to attack this particular questioner but doesn’t really deal with the overall problem for Labour.
This topic will evidently surface regularly at PMQs, and at some point, Starmer will need a better answer. The problem with using statistics-based answers, as Gordon Brown often found, is that politics is about more than numbers. Child poverty is a high-emotion subject which feeds into all sorts of other issues. We can expect future questioners to present Starmer with plenty of real-life cases.
4. Starmer needs to work on his delivery
As Labour moves out of its honeymoon phase, and opposition politicians become more used to their roles, we should expect fireworks to return. Answering the Flynn question with statistics and repeating them later was Starmer relying on preparation.
Much of Wednesday’s event consisted of MPs asking questions on predictable themes. Starmer could be ready with answers and slogans. These questions didn’t test Starmer and didn’t require him to quickly change tack or think on his feet. He will need to find ways of being fleeter of foot when the tricky questions make their reappearance.
GOING FURTHER:
Sources:
▪ This piece was originally published in The Conversation and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 25 July 2024. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/UK Parliament. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
[Read our Comments Guidelines]