Gavin Williamson is still causing problems for Rishi Sunak

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions showed it is possible for someone who has resigned for being a distraction to continue being so even in absentia. The first questions from Keir Starmer were all about Rishi Sunak’s appointment of Gavin Williamson and his departure. The Labour leader had good lines, while the Prime Minister was unable to show strength in suggesting he had been the one to force Williamson out of government. Instead he could only say that he regretted ‘appointing someone who had to resign in these circumstances’ and that he wanted to send a message that ‘integrity in public life matters, that is why it is right that he resigned’. It all made Sunak sound rather passive and as though Williamson had been calling the shots. Williamson, of course, denies all the allegations and has quit in part to clear his name. 

Starmer described Williamson as a ‘pathetic bully’, and someone who has spent years ‘blurring the lines to normalise bullying behaviour’. He also mocked the way Williamson had repeatedly boasted about his tarantula – or ‘cartoon bully with a pet spider’ as Starmer dismissed the threatening arachnid and its owner. But the reason he wanted to talk about Williamson after the resignation was that it allowed him to say something about Sunak: he described the PM as being the boss who let a middle manager get out of hand by giving him power. His best line, though, came when the exchanges had left Westminster and moved onto the economy and disruption by trade unions and environmental protestors. Sunak accused Starmer of not standing up to the strikers, but the Labour leader shot back: ‘I’m against all of those causing chaos damage to public services, to our economy, whether they are gluing themselves to the road or sitting on the government benches.’

It shows us just what a difficult stage of the Conservatives’ time in government Sunak is having to preside over that this was only his second PMQs and he was already well into the sort of problems that beset a PM in their mid-term, not their traditional honeymoon. It’s worth pointing out, though, that this is now very much a safe topic for Starmer, who may have to branch out into more substantive policy debates if he is to change the public’s view of him as a prime minister in waiting.