"Does the PM actually accept that he broke the law?"

Boris Johnson suffered yet another humiliating PMQs after facing more questions about his law breaking, lying and trashing of standards in public life.

It was the first PMQs after MPs returned to Parliament following the Easter break, during which Johnson and Sunak received fines from the Met Police for breaking the very lockdown rules they set.

Keir Starmer chose to focus on the partygate scandal and the prime minister’s lies as well as his attacks on the Archbishop of the Canterbury.

The Labour leader kicked off PMQs by listing how three people, Allegra Stratton, Matt Hancock and Professor Neil Ferguson all lost their jobs after breaking the rules, before asking why Johnson had not done the same.

Johnson desperately tried to move the questions on from partygate, before Starmer then asked him if he accepted he broke the law, to which Johnson once again reiterated that he accepted the police’s findings and had paid the fixed penalty notice.

During a heated PMQs, Starmer also slammed the prime minister for his alleged comments criticising Justin Welby, after the Archbishop of Canterbury had been critical of the government’s policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Starmer asked Johnson to apologise for slandering the Archbishop, only for Johnson to respond by talking about David Blunkett and going off on a tangent.

The prime minister also faced some stinging criticism from other MPs, with the SNP’s Ian Blackford saying that the country was stuck with “a PM who can’t be trusted with the truth, and a Chancellor who can’t be trusted with his taxes”.

Labour’s Ruth Jones blasted Boris Johnson over partygate, saying: “This is a Prime Minister that’s not fit to run a bath, never mind this country!”.

It was yet another shameful performance from a prime minister who repeatedly lies and has broken the law, and whose very presence in Downing Street denigrates the highest office in the land.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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