Rishi Sunak had been warned that Brianna Ghey’s bereaved mother would be watching. If he hadn’t initially expected Esther Ghey to be in the public gallery, gazing down on the bear pit of prime minister’s questions like a visitor from another world entirely, then the penny should have dropped when Keir Starmer opened by welcoming her to parliament.
That was the prime minister’s cue to flip through his ring binder and cross out a tacky prepared line – variants of which he has used several times before – about Starmer changing his mind on everything from tuition fees to planning law to “defining a woman, although, in fairness, that was only 99% of a U-turn” (a reference to Starmer saying 99.9% of women don’t have penises). Nobody need ever have known. Ironically, the attack might have landed better without it, given the day’s headlines would then have been dominated by Labour flip-flopping on green policies instead of a mortifying prime ministerial misjudgment.
