Today, April 29, 2020 at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was absent, still recovering from covid19. On the bright side: he and his fiancee Carrie Symonds announced the birth of their son this morning.
At the prime minister’s place, Dominic Raab (*1974), First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was at the dispatch box answering questions. Opposite him was Keir Starmer (*1962), the new Labour leader elected with 56.1% in the first round of the party membership ballot (result made public on April 4).
Keir Starmer is a man close to the former Labour leader Ed Miliband, a long-time friend, whom he has brought back to the shadow cabinet. Starmer himself is not quite as centrist as some media want you to make believe. The former human rights lawyer has pledged to abolish Universal Credit, ban tuition fees and renationalize mail, rail and water. He is a softer version of former Labour leader Jermey Corbyn, but nevertheless clearly a man of the left, not the center.
At Questions to the Prime Minister, Dominic Raab and Keir Starmer, both trained lawyers, looked tired. They both seemed without enough sleep. Both men were calm, trying to stick to the facts, a stark contrast with the heated debates between the populist showman and Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, an ideologue of the hard-left.
As for the substance, Dominic Raab rejected Keir Starmer’s claim that the crisis was getting worse not better. Furthermore, Keir Starmer was asking the government to publish an exit strategy and warned of “delay risks”, the UK falling behind other nations. To another MP, Dominic Raab replied that the government had no intention to postpone Brexit.
Keir Starmer was not asking for lifting the lockdown. A mistake in my opinion, because what is needed is just a strict observance and enforcement of key measures such as: social distancing (6 feet) + masks + hygiene + massive covid19-testing. The lockdown will just kill the economy.
One more interesting exchange during Questions to the Prime Minister: Zarah Sultana Labour MP for Coventry South said: “While working people are having to make huge sacrifices through this crisis, stately support is available to big businesses that dodged taxes and paid millions to super rich executives and shareholders. Mister Speaker, we should be bailing out the 99% not the 1%. So will the government follow the likes of Denmark and stand up to big businesses by saying: if you want state support, you have to prohibit dividend payments and share buybacks and you can’t be based in a tax haven?”
Dominic Raab answered: “… not only we’re dealing with small businesses, but we are also helping those larger businesses, and they are important too, they are large employers. And we are doing everything to support innovative firms which will now benefit from the offer of £1.25 billion, which is the high growth firms. So, I think, we should take frankly some of the partisan baggage out of this, focus on targeting the businesses that will create the growth which will drive us through this crisis and support the workers up and down this country who rely on those crucial businesses.”
The exchange shows the ideological divide in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, after weeks during which Prime Minister Boris Johnson was not up to the job fighting SARS-CoV-2, the country seems now to be united regarding the healthcare response to the covid19-epidemic.
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The Official portrait of Dominic Raab. Source: Parliament UK; also used by Wikipedia.
Article added at 16:06 German time.
