Keir Starmer roasts Richard Tice during PMQs and tells him to pay his taxes

Prime Minister Keir Starmer took apart Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice during PMQs earlier today and told him to ‘pay his taxes’ so that the government can deal with the problems the country faces.

During a heated exchange in the Commons this afternoon, Tice claimed the Prime Minister was in denial over ‘stopping the boats’, once more claimed without evidence, that the Prime Minister had failed to tackle two-tier policing, and criticised him for failing to deal with discontent in the country.

Tice called on the Prime Minister to resign.

Starmer hit back by criticising Reform’s attempts to exploit the horrific murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, by whipping up hatred against minorities and seeking to create hatred and division.

He also criticised a ‘difficult situation in Northern Ireland’ after masked men burned families out of their homes in Belfast and torched a number of vehicles ​in a wave of anti-immigrant violence on Tuesday night that followed a knife attack for which a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder. 

SDLP leader Claire Hannah said on Newsnight that what we are witnessing is a ‘pogrom’, with masked men going door to door asking to ‘get the foreigners out’ based exclusively on the colour of their skin.”

Starmer went on to add: “When we pass legislation to stop the boats, what do they do, they voted against it, and to take those measures you need money, and he has still not properly addressed why his companies didn’t just aggressively avoid tax but failed to pay tax that they legally owed, his investment company then gave huge donations to Reform. 

“If only he paid his tax we’d have more money to deal with these issues.”

It was revealed by the Sunday Times in April that Tice ran four shell companies that did not pay any tax on profits between 2020 and 2022. That in turn benefited his investment company which made large donations to Reform.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward