The tide has turned for Rishi Sunak

He may have won all three arguments at PMQs, but it doesn’t matter, writes John Rentoul

Sunak threw back Gordon Brown’s plans – unveiled by Starmer only on Monday – to give local people more say. (UK PARLIAMENT/AFP via Getty Imag)

Keir Starmer failed to get past Rishi Sunak’s defences in the Commons today. The Labour leader called the prime minister a blancmange for giving in to his backbenchers by dropping compulsory national targets for house-building. A blancmange? What is that? Well, it wobbles and then “does a grubby deal with his own MPs”. It is a perfect analogy.

But Sunak threw back Gordon Brown’s plans – unveiled by Starmer only on Monday – to give local people more say. This is the problem with easy slogans. Everyone wants more houses, and everyone also wants more local democracy. The job of the opposition is to pretend such conflicts don’t exist; the job of the government is to resolve them, and to arrive at a reasonable compromise. Which is roughly what Sunak has done, so Starmer lost that argument, but he put on a good show of pretending he hadn’t, which is half the battle.

Starmer switched subject for questions four and five, regarding allegations that Baroness Mone, a Conservative peer, had ended up benefitting from coronavirus contracts. Sunak sounded less comfortable. He was “absolutely shocked” when he read of the allegations; but he said that Starmer is a lawyer so he will understand that there is a process and that it would be wrong to comment. And besides, Lady Mone has left the House of Lords, so she doesn’t take the Conservative whip anymore – although a No 10 spokesperson had earlier refused to say if she was still a Conservative.