Keir Starmer finally came into his own against a prime minister on the defensive

Perhaps it was because he was relaxed that Keir Starmer had his best outing at Prime Minister’s Questions today. All attention was on the Sue Gray report, which had just been published and on which Boris Johnson was about to make a statement.

So the Labour leader knew that there was no pressure to score points in the preliminary exchanges. As a result, he succeeded in embarrassing Johnson over his imminent U-turn in adopting Labour’s policy of help with energy bills paid for by a windfall tax. “It sounds like he’s finally seen sense,” Starmer commented casually.

Johnson, who was subdued as he prepared to come across as ever so humble in his apology for lockdown law-breaking, went through the motions of fighting back, asserting that there was “nothing original about a Labour plan to put up tax”.