Keir Starmer today branded Boris Johnson the “Comical Ali of the cost of living crisis” - and said the “ostrich” PM has his “head in the sand”.
In their final PMQs clash before the local elections, Labour ’s leader blasted the Prime Minister for failing to tackle huge rise in bills facing Brits.
Yesterday Mr Johnson ordered ministers to come up with solutions to the crisis.
But the Cabinet meeting descended into a spat about whether the Tories should lower the tax burden, currently its highest in decades.
And ideas that were raised - from spacing out MOTs every two years, to cutting safety restrictions on how many kids childminders can look after - were panned as dangerous and unworkable.
Labour’s leader said: "He sounds like the Comical Ali of the cost of living crisis.
“He pretends the economy is booming.
“But in the real world our growth is set to be slower than every G20 country except one - Russia.
"And our inflation is going to be double the rest of the G7.
“Does he think that denying the facts staring him in the face makes things better or worse for working people?"
Comical Ali was a nickname given to Iraq’s former Minister for Information, who gave colourful briefings defending the regime during the 2003 war.
The Prime Minister said: "The facts are, as the IMF has said, that the UK came out of Covid faster than anybody else, that's why we had the fastest growth in the G7 last year. That would not have happened if we'd listened to Captain Hindsight.”
The G7 claim is misleading. UK GDP growth was 7.4% in 2021, the highest in the G7.
But that is not the full picture - because it also fell by 9.4% in 2020 according to the IMF, the worst of any G7 country. That meant it bounced back more dramatically too.
Mr Johnson also repeated a misleading claim about employment that he has repeatedly been told is not accurate.
He said there were “500,000 more people in paid employment now than there were before the pandemic began”.
While people on payrolls are up since pre-Covid, the number of people in jobs overall was still down by 580,000 compared to December 2019-February 2020, previous figures suggested.
The difference between payroll and employment is because payroll statistics do not capture the self-employed.
At Prime Minister's questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer branded the PM an "ostrich" with his head in the sand over rising bills.
The Labour leader told the Commons: “He's an ostrich, perfectly happy keeping his head in the sand.
“Working people are worried about paying their bills, they're spending less and cutting back - that's bad for business and bad for growth.
"Working people are looking for help but this week millions will look at their payslip and see a tax rise with his fingerprints all over it.
"Does he think his 15th tax rise has made things better or worse for working people?"
Mr Johnson replied: "What we're doing for working people is not only lifting the living wage by a record amount, helping people on Universal Credit with a £1,000 tax cut, but also cutting national insurance contributions, lifting the threshold so that on average people pay £330 less."
Sir Keir countered: "It's as if he's only just waking up to the cost-of-living crisis.
“And his big idea? Fewer MOTs. It actually makes the cones hotline sound visionary and inspirational."
