By Tony O’Riley-
Keir Starmer has said Boris Johnson is “too weak” to lead the UK through the health crisis caused by Omicron, and the government’s reliance on Labour votes to pass new Covid measures showed the PM had lost authority with his own MPs.
In a final prime minister’s questions before Christmas, the Labour leader pointed to the rebellion by 99 Conservative MPs on Tuesday evening over Covid certificates, which was ultimately unsuccessful because of the opposition support from the Labour party which helped the Commons vote go through.
Labour “stood up and showed the leadership the prime minister can’t”, Starmer told the Commons. “The prime minister is so weak that without Labour help last night, vital public health measures wouldn’t have got through.
“We can’t go on with a prime minister who’s too weak to lead. So will the prime minister take time this Christmas to look in the mirror and ask himself whether he has the trust and authority to lead this country?”, he asked?
Starmer said that while he disagreed with the Tory rebels, he understood their doubts about heeding Johnson’s call for tougher Covid rules given multiple reports about lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street last winter.
“For weeks now he claimed that no rules were broken,” Starmer said. “He claims he didn’t know what was happening in his own house at Christmas. I don’t believe it. His MPs don’t believe it, and nor do the British public. He’s taking the public for fools and it’s becoming dangerous.
“The message from the government has to be: we know that following the rules won’t be easy this Christmas, but it is necessary. Can the prime minister not see that he has no hope of regaining the moral authority to deliver that difficult message if he cannot be straight with the British public about the rule-breaking in Downing Street last Christmas?”
Johnson responded by calling the allegations about illicit parties “partisan trivia” that were of no interest to the public. He said he had repeatedly answered questions on the allegations, and that the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, was carrying out an investigation.
Johnson claim that the parties are of no interest to the public lacks credibility due to the implications of rule breaking the revelations exposed. A rule that does not apply to all is hardly a rule at all. Public confidence in the prime minister is truly at an all time low, and members of the public who are against the restrictions are particularly incensed with the fact the prime minister brought them in within 24 hours of the leakage as a diversionary tactic to the breaches by his own ministers. Those in favour of the restrictions will be more interested in seeing the new measures in place than they would be any reference to the parties that amounted to a breach of the law.
Starmer attempted to get Johnson to state that those members of the opposition who voted against the measures were compromising the health of the Nhs . He asked: “Given the seriousness of the situation, does the prime minister agree that the Conservative members who voted against plan B last night voted against steps which are necessary to protect the NHS and to protect lives?”
Starmer has successfully exploited the internal weakness in the conservative party, but a legitimate question remains whether Starmer himself has the moral ground to attack Johnson’s leadership on the basis of a rebellion the Labour party leader himself believes was wrong.
The prime minister may have shown leadership in standing for policies he was convinced about, which Starmer himself says were necessary to protect lives and the Nhs.