There was a moment last Monday in the House of Commons when Keir Starmer was lost for words and then froze for a few seconds on the front bench. Unlike most of his MPs he could not even muster an angry gesticulation in Boris Johnson’s direction. Instead, Starmer sat motionless, staring and blinking at the prime minister across the dispatch box with a look of sheer contempt.
What the prime minister had just said about the leader of the opposition – that when he had been director of public prosecutions he “spent most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile” – was soon shown by fact checkers to be baseless. It was also – in the opinion of most MPs – deeply insensitive and gratuitous.
