Keir Starmer came unstuck at PMQs – and not just when it came to the monarchy

Prime Minister’s Questions did not go well for the Labour leader, says John Rentoul. The effect is that the prime minister got it right and the former lawyer didn’t

Keir Starmer thought he was going to have a difficult time at Prime Minister’s Questions. An old video had just been unearthed in which he said it was odd to be made a Queen’s Counsel because “I often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy”. But it was merely awkward. He could brush it off as the exuberance of youth – it was 2005 and in the past tense; anyone who isn’t a republican at the age of 20 hasn’t got a heart etc. 

Boris Johnson was bound to mention it, especially because of this morning’s report of public relations advice to the Labour leader that he should wrap himself in the flag and the mantle of patriotism. But the prime minister didn’t get that far, because he had saved it up for his reply to Starmer’s sixth question, knowing that Starmer wouldn’t be able to answer back; as soon as Johnson strayed from the subject at hand to accuse Starmer of looking at focus groups telling him to “stop sitting on the fence”, the speaker intervened to cut him short. 

By then, though, the session had gone wrong for Starmer in an unexpected direction. The Labour leader, the lawyer who is on top of the detail, had come unstuck against the prime minister, the comic light essayist who usually busks it.