Sunak and Starmer risk getting too comfortable at PMQs

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak seem to be settling into a comfortable but largely unremarkable slanging match at each Prime Minister's Questions. Today the pair traded one-liners about each other while failing to land any blows or indeed move the political debate along at all.

The Labour leader opened by condemning Fifa and the behaviour of the Qatari regime during the men's football World Cup, before performing a handbrake turn to talking about the economy. Sunak had been leafing through his briefing notes to find the section on Qatar, but found himself instead responding to a question about why Britain faces the lowest growth of any OECD country over the next two years.

The Prime Minister argued that his government was going to deliver more growth, before advising Starmer that 'if the Labour Party is serious about actually supporting growth, maybe they should get on the phone with their union paymasters'. The exchanges stuck on the OECD report for a couple of questions, with Starmer accusing Sunak of being 'in total denial' and likening him to being a 'football manager bottom of the league at Christmas, celebrating an away draw a few months ago'.

Sunak's response was to go into the detail of the OECD report, arguing that it was 'crystal clear that the challenges we face are completely international in nature'. But he was then interrupted by the Speaker who complained for a second time that session that the Prime Minister was talking for too long. 'You came to me quite rightly and said to me "I want to get through Prime Minister's Questions and I'm going to give short answers". Please stick to what you promised.' Opposition MPs whooped and cheered at this little revelation of a private conversation.

Starmer was once again keen to attack Sunak on his visible weaknesses, such as non-doms and the windfall tax. He talked about 'the failure of the last 12 years and the chaos of the last 12 weeks'. He added: 'Too weak to take on his party, too weak to take on the vested interests. Twelve long years of Tory government, five prime ministers, seven chancellors. Why do they always clobber working people?' Sunak had a very good – and accurate – response: 'He talks about leadership. This summer, I stood on my principles and told the country what they needed to hear, even though it was difficult. When he ran for leader, he told his party what they wanted to hear.'

Did anyone learn anything from this? No. The biggest revelation was that Sunak didn't feel the need to mention Jeremy Corbyn, who he always reaches for when Starmer appears to be getting ahead.

A greater point of drama came later when the Speaker, having revealed the contents of a private conversation with the Prime Minister, then complained that SNP MP John Nicolson had published extracts on Twitter of a private letter that Hoyle had sent him. Nicolson stood up to give an extremely limited apology about why he had only tweeted parts of it. The letter concerned his decision not to refer Nadine Dorries to the Privileges Committee for remarks she made to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee when she was Secretary of State for that brief.

David Davis, never one to avoid a fight, chipped in with his own views on the quality of Nicolson's apology. For a moment it looked as though the Chamber was going to witness a fight of greater proportions than anything that happened at PMQs. Hoyle decided to leave it there, but given the demeanour of the two MPs who got involved, it's unlikely this is the last time the row spills into the Commons.