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Sunak, Starmer Unleash Attack Lines as UK’s Long Campaign Begins
(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer accused each other of lacking a plan for Britain, as they squared off for the first time in what could be a yearlong battle for control of the government.
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The two men traded insults — Sunak accused Starmer of pandering to his “union friends” while the Labour Party chief mocked the premier as “Mr. Nobody” — in a taste of what’s expected to be bitter election campaign. In the first House of Commons question session of the year, Starmer poked fun at Sunak’s decision to drop attempts to cast himself as an agent of change and tout continuity instead, a strategy shift reported by Bloomberg on Monday.
“Last year he started the year saying he was Mr. Steady. Then at his conference he was Mr. Change. Now he’s flipped back to Mr. More of the Same,” Starmer said, to roars of support from Labour lawmakers. “It doesn’t matter how many relaunches and flip flops he does, he’ll always be Mr. Nobody.”
Sunak responded with his usual attack line, that the labor union-backed party lacks detailed policies to address issues, including the number of asylum-seekers arriving in small boats across the English Channel. “It’s always the same thing with him: There’s no plan — it’s peddling one thing to his union friends and another thing to the British people,” Sunak said.
Still, Sunak repeated the central message of his revised strategy, adding a dig at Starmer: “It’s crystal clear: Stick with us to deliver the long-term change that the country needs,” he said. “Don’t go back to square one with him.”
The exchange set the stage for a pugilistic year in Parliament, with the prime minister resisting opposition demands for a May election at a time when his party is lagging about 20 points behind Labour in the polls.
The premier told reporters last week that his “working assumption” was that he would dissolve Parliament in the “second half” of the year, running out much of the clock before a January 2025 deadline for a nationwide vote. Labour is seeking to return to power for the first time in 14 years.
Sunak, who took office in October 2022 after Liz Truss’s brief and tumultuous premiership, faces an uphill battle in his first national campaign as leader.
First, he must get Parliament to approve his controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, despite a UK Supreme Court decision deeming it unlawful. A bill to declare Rwanda a safe country for refugees and limit court challenges to the program survived an unusually fraught vote last month, after a rebellion by Tories who argue it doesn’t go far enough.
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Critics including Sunak’s former immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, are seeking to amend the legislation to make it harder for the European Court of Human Rights to block deportation flights. The bill is expected to face opposition in the House of Lords, even if Sunak can fend off amendments and bring it to a successful vote in the Commons in the coming weeks.
Last week media including the BBC and Times newspaper reported they had seen documents showing Sunak expressed skepticism about the Rwanda plan while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, doubts detailed by Bloomberg last month. Starmer seized on those reports to attack the credibility of the program.
“It is hardly a surprise he wanted to scrap the scheme,” Starmer said.
Sunak said Starmer was refusing to say what he would do to stop the boats, which carried some 30,000 asylum-seekers to the UK last year. “He is the only one opposed to a proper deterrent, not because it doesn’t work, but because he doesn’t actually believe in controlling migration,” the prime minister said.
Labour says its plan is to tackle the asylum issue by going after the criminal gangs organizing the small boat crossings. That will require greater cooperation with European nations including France, Starmer has said.
--With assistance from Alex Morales.
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