Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson marked the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths by point-scoring as usual

The Labour leader began PMQs by asking why Britain has such a terrible death rate. But he knows full well that Boris Johnson cannot give an honest answer, says John Rentoul

(Reuters TV)

We might have hoped, on the day after the milestone of 100,000 deaths was passed, for a suspension of party political hostilities at Prime Minister’s Questions today. 

It was not to be. Keir Starmer began by asking why Britain has such a terrible death rate, knowing full well that Boris Johnson cannot give an honest answer, which would probably comprise equal parts of “we don’t know”, “bad luck”, “because we are an open society” and “maybe in hindsight I can think of a few things I might have done differently”. 

Starmer focused on the last of these, and accused the prime minister of having been consistently slow in responding to the coronavirus. This is partly unfair, because in most cases the opposition was not calling for action before the prime minister took it. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, came a cropper on the radio this morning when he described Eat Out to Help Out as “a mistake”, but when he was asked if he had opposed it at the time, said: “No.”