How Boris Johnson can bounce back against Keir Starmer – Bernard Ingham

WHAT distinguishes the UK from the other European democracies? Answer: the House of Commons.
Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions.Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions.
Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions.

Margaret Thatcher claimed she was the only leader who was required to report on European summits as soon as possible – usually the next day.

Once on the plane back to London she would begin writing her statement unless she was so worn out by the experience that she just dozed off. In that event, officials prepared a draft for overnight tinkering.

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Boris Johnson will be relieved of this tedium at the end of the year when we are scheduled at last to Brexit.

The scene in Parliament at Prime Minister's Questions.The scene in Parliament at Prime Minister's Questions.
The scene in Parliament at Prime Minister's Questions.

But he will still face Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) for half an hour on Wednesday, the possibility of Private Notice Questions (PNQs) or Opposition debates.

It is doubtful whether many people understand the time and resources involved in preparing the PM for these adversarial encounters.

Mrs Thatcher had a private secretary specifically responsible for Parliamentary affairs. Her other private secretaries racked their specialist brains for likely questions. So did I in preparing a digest of the day’s press and broadcasting for her daily 9am briefings.

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Her preparations continued over a sandwich lunch, with her private secretaries and I on call, and then over at the Commons until 3.10pm when she went into the chamber to face the 
music.

Boris Johnson has been coming under pressure at PMQs.Boris Johnson has been coming under pressure at PMQs.
Boris Johnson has been coming under pressure at PMQs.

While Neil Kinnock seldom inconvenienced her during their then twice-weekly PMQs, it was the very devil to anticipate the subject he would chose to try to fluster her.

Sir Keir Starmer, the new Opposition leader, might be more predictable but his forensic QC’s mind and manner present an altogether more difficult challenge than Kinnock or Jeremy Corbyn ever could.

He is also felt to have made a good start to the job of scoring points off Boris. And let’s be realistic: Parliamentary confrontations are not primarily about eliciting information but scoring political points.

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A PM who regularly knocks spots off his or her opponent raises the morale of her party and vice-versa. Yet even though Mrs Thatcher regularly wiped the floor with Kinnock she was eventually sacked by her party. Politics is a pitiless game.

This is PMQs under social distancing protocols.This is PMQs under social distancing protocols.
This is PMQs under social distancing protocols.

It is also fair to say that. notwithstanding rampant unions, a battered economy, rising unemployment, soaring inflation and interest rates and a party split by Wets and Europhiles, she never had to face Boris’s problems.

It is not just a case of his having had a narrow brush with coronavirus death with a child on the way. It is the effect that such an awful experience has clearly had on his usual Woosterish self.

It is also an indisputable fact that no PM since the war has had to fight an unseen and unknown enemy, potentially lurking in every human contact, 
culling so far over 34,000 lives (when 20,000 deaths were initially thought would be an achievement) and with an economy plummeting ever deeper into debt.

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This is where Starmer has to be careful. Already he is being seen as wise after the event without having vouchsafed a better way of handling 
the crisis. But he is immensely 
vulnerable on two other fronts: the obstructive unions that finance his 
party and on Europe where no doubt he wishes to postpone our final exit in December.

Contrast the public service ethic – and sacrifice – of doctors, nurses, ancillary frontline hospital staff, carers, paramedics, ambulance drivers, police and Army – with the whingeing approach to a return to work by unions largely representing cosseted public sector workers, including teachers.

Let’s face it, no one can guarantee anyone’s safety from the covid bug in its various strains. All any government can do is to advise people, on the basis of scientific consensus, how to minimise risk while at the same time trying to get a crashing economy moving, safeguarding the future of our children in more ways than one.

Never forget that economic estimates point to a budget deficit roughly double that left by Gordon Brown in 2010 resulting, partly from an economic crash and his own profligacy.

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In these circumstances Boris Johnson now needs to get a tighter grip on his Government and wayward party, recover his ebullience, continue to appeal to the common sense of the majority and allow an Opposition no quarter in its real dilemmas.

One of them is the potential political poison of being seen to be with Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon who looks ever more stupid in her one-track secessionist mind, obsessed with Scottish independence

Amid all his troubles Boris has reasons still to bounce at the Dispatch Box.

My advice: bounce back, Boris.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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James Mitchinson

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