Keir Starmer has used the first prime minister’s questions since last week’s local elections to mock Rishi Sunak for the poor Conservative results, saying the loss of councillors was “a Tory promise they actually haven’t broken”. Reiterating his recent attacks on the prime minister as desperately out of touch, Starmer portrayed him as also electorally hapless, citing both Thursday’s vote and his loss to Liz Truss last summer in the Conservative leadership race. “This is the prime minister who has only had to fight for two things in his life. Last year he lost a Tory beauty contest to the member for South West Norfolk, who then lost to a lettuce,” the Labour leader said. “Last week, when he finally came into contact with voters he lost everywhere. No matter who the electorate is, the prime minister keeps entering a two-horse race and somehow finishing third. Given his track record, who does he think he’s actually got a mandate from?” Referencing predictions by ministers before the elections that the Tories could lose up to 1,000 seats, viewed as a deliberately excessive figure to manage expectations, Starmer said: “The prime minister said he was going to lose 1,000 seats and then he managed to. After 13 years, a Tory promise they actually haven’t broken.” In response, Sunak said it was “a bit rich to hear about mandates from the person who’s broken every single promise he was elected on”, a reference to the various pledges made by Starmer in the Labour leadership election which he has since dropped. Starmer “can be as cocky as he likes about the local elections”, Sunak said, adding: “Come a general election, policy counts. The problem for him is, he doesn’t have any.” The often noisy session began with Starmer referring to Sunak’s incorrect claim at last week’s PMQs that there were “record numbers” of people in work, which he later had to rescind. “This time last week, the prime minister had to correct the record on misleading claims he made about employment numbers. Can he provide a further update now he has cost 1,000 Tory councillors their jobs?” Starmer asked, prompting laughs from the Labour benches. Calling for Sunak to freeze council tax bills, Starmer said the government appeared to be ignoring Thursday’s results, and was ploughing ahead with the same policies. “To quote one of his more electorally successful predecessors: nothing has changed,” Starmer said, a reference to one of Theresa May’s most famous utterances. “Still blaming other people, still refusing to take the necessary action, still not listening to the country.”
Continuing another recent refrain, Starmer referenced the non-domiciled tax status enjoyed by Sunak’s wife: “I’m sure the prime minister must finally have met some working people recently. Did any of them understand why he insists on protecting his precious non-dom tax status rather than scrapping it and using the money to train thousands of doctors and nurses?” He continued: “This is the price of having a tired, worn-out government fronted by a prime minister who boasts he has never had a working-class friend. “He’s smiling his way through the cost of living crisis, gloating about success while waiting lists grow. He’s pretending that crime, housebuilding, schools are all doing fine while handing the country 24 tax rises all with his name on them. “How does he think the Tories can possibly provide the answers Britain needs when the whole country has already told him, they’re the problem, not the solution?” Sunak responded by making two references to the economic record of the last Labour government, which left office in 2010, five years before either he or Starmer entered parliament.