When Keir Starmer gathered with a small team of aides, first thing on Wednesday, to discuss lines of attack for prime minister’s questions, the plan fell into place with relative ease. Starmer, his officials say, generally arrives at his office in parliament early and is “incredibly well informed about what has been in all the papers and the media” but on this occasion no one had had to search too far for material.
The best line – from Labour’s point of view – was staring Starmer and his team in the face. Late the previous evening, news had broken on social media that the Tory MP and ex-cabinet minister Simon Clarke had written a piece for Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph calling for Rishi Sunak to be ousted. If he were to lead the Conservatives into a general election, Clarke wrote, “extinction” was “a very real possibility” for his party. So extreme was the language that it read like a Labour critique of the prime minster. “He does not get what Britain needs and he is not listening to what the British people want,” said Clarke.
