‘He’s given up’: all-drama Starmer’s wounding smack on slack Sunak rings true

The prime minister used to bounce around at the despatch box like a prize fighter, but there was no fight in him today, writes John Rentoul

Rishi Sunak’s battery seems to be running down. He replied to Starmer’s questions with a weary condescension, complaining that the Labour leader hasn’t taken the time to understand the detail (PA Wire)

Keir Starmer, who opposed the 300,000-a-year house-building target before he supported it, asked Rishi Sunak why he is against it when he used to be for it.

The prime minister replied with a jumble of statistics that amounted to: “Look, you and I both know that it is difficult to build houses in places people want to live in the UK, and that successive governments have tried to get more houses built, but they are pretty much up against the limits of what is possible in democratic politics, in which the interests of existing residents have more electoral power than the diffuse interests of a generation who would like to live somewhere but have no leverage in specific constituencies.”

The honest answer to Starmer’s question is that it is easier for an opposition to support an unrealistic target than it is for a government. What is interesting is that it was only last year that Labour’s policy was to be on the side of “local people” against “developers”. But now, Starmer has decided to leave it to the Liberal Democrats to run Nimby campaigns against Conservatives in the southeast, while Labour can go for a simpler “build more houses” message nationally. It is all part of the informal Lib-Lab alliance against the Tories.