"Would he like to take the opportunity to correct the record now he’s cost 1000 Tory councillors their jobs?”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak endured yet another difficult Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, which comes after the Tory party lost more than a thousand council seats.
Labour leader Keir Starmer began PMQs by bringing up the local election results, telling Sunak: “This time last week the Prime Minister had to correct the record after giving misleading claims he gave on employment numbers.
“Would he like to take the opportunity to correct the record now he’s cost 1000 Tory councillors their jobs?”
Starmer’s comments came after the Tories suffered major losses in Rishi Sunak’s first electoral test as Prime Minister, with the party losing 1,060 seats in Thursday’s local elections and relinquishing control of 48 councils.
Sunak replied that what matters at general elections are policies rather than local election results, before the Labour leader told Sunak that he had only lost two things in his life – a beauty contest with Liz Truss last year, before Truss lost to a lettuce, and then the locals.
Starmer also challenged the Prime Minister to announce an immediate freeze to council tax bills during a cost of living crisis.
He said: “Up and down the country people want the government to focus on the cost of living, but he’s got no answers. Is he planning to carry on as if nothing happened and ignore the message he was sent last week?
“Or is he going to do what a Labour government would do and announce an immediate freeze in council tax bills?”
Starmer also took the opportunity to once more portray Sunak as out of touch asking him if any of the working people he met understood why the Prime Minister protected his “non-dom status” instead of using money to train doctors and nurses.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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