PMQs: Boris Johnson accused of ‘governing in hindsight’

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PMQs: Boris Johnson accused of ‘governing in hindsight’

Media playback is unsupported in your machine Media captionKeir Starmer says Boris Johnson should lengthen the


Media playback is unsupported in your machine

Media captionKeir Starmer says Boris Johnson should lengthen the job retention scheme because it was “desperately wanted”.

Boris Johnson was accused of “governing in hindsight” over a collection of U-turns, as he appeared earlier than MPs at PMQs for the primary time since July.

Labour chief Sir Keir Starmer claimed the prime minister was “making it up as he goes alongside”.

And he stated even Mr Johnson’s personal MPs had “run out of persistence” after what he claimed was 12 U-turns over the summer time.

The PM hit again by calling Sir Keir “captain hindsight” over the examination outcomes debacle.

He accused the Labour chief of “leaping on a bandwagon, opposing a coverage that he supported two weeks in the past”.

The SNP’s Westminster chief Ian Blackford claimed Mr Johnson had made eight U-turns this 12 months – and he known as for a ninth to increase the federal government’s job retention scheme, which ends subsequent month, echoing a name made by Sir Keir.

The PM insisted “indefinite furlough” was not the reply to assist the financial system by means of the pandemic.

With grumblings on the Tory benches in regards to the authorities’s latest efficiency Boris Johnson wanted a superb PMQs to mark the return to parliament.

His political opponents – maybe unsurprisingly – criticised the variety of coverage U-turns in latest months.

Whereas ministers have repeatedly stated they’re responding to altering science because the pandemic progresses, the pace and frequency of coverage shifts is the crux of concern amongst some Conservative backbenchers.

Keir Starmer returned to what some supporters have known as a “forensic” model of questioning in pushing the prime minister for element on the examination outcomes disaster.

Boris Johnson responded with a wide-ranging assault on the Labour chief which led to a tetchy alternate.

However with one other shift in coverage – this time on native lockdowns in Trafford and Bolton – going down because the prime minister was on the dispatch field, it appears unlikely his efficiency was sufficient to silence critics – together with these inside his personal occasion.

In heated exchanges, Sir Keir informed the PM: “This has been a wasted summer time. The federal government ought to have spent it making ready for the autumn and winter.

“As an alternative, they’ve lurched from disaster to disaster, U-turn to U-turn.”

He accused the federal government of “serial incompetence”, and requested: “Will the prime minister take accountability and eventually get a grip?”

Media playback is unsupported in your machine

Media captionIan Blackford calls on the federal government to “change tack for a ninth time” and lengthen the job retention scheme.

Mr Johnson hit again by citing a collection of alleged U-turns made by Sir Keir previously and – in a reference to his predecessor as Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn – accusing him of supporting “an IRA-condoning politician who needed to get out of Nato”.

Speaker Sir Lindsey Hoyle intervened to warn the prime minster “to reply the questions which have been put” to him.

A clearly offended Sir Keir stated: “As Director of Public Prosecutions, I prosecuted severe terrorists for 5 years, working with the intelligence and safety forces and with the police in Northern Eire.

“I ask the prime minister to have the decency to withdraw that remark.”

Talking afterwards, Labour sources stated they might not be taking the matter additional, however added that the PM had supported a peerage for former Brexit Social gathering MEP, Claire Fox, who had as soon as been a member of a far left occasion which defended an IRA assault,



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