PMQs sketch: A local election drinking game, by Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak
In celebration of the impending Coronation, no, not of the King, but of 8,000 local councillors across the country, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer came up with a novel idea: a PMQs drinking game.
Of course, it’s slightly awkward because Sunak is a teetotal, but it was fun for everyone else to take a sneaky shot every time they quoted from one of their own campaign posters for the local elections.
From Keir, we had “economic vandalism”, “out of touch” Rishi, a bunch of anti-housing Nimby’s in government and a joke about the prime minister’s swimming pool.
From Rishi, we had “U-turns and broken promises”, we had Starmer “concreting over the greenbelt”, useless local Mayors, and of course, it wouldn’t be a pre-election PMQs without a shout out to Greg Hands’ favourite Liam Byrne letter declaring there was “no money left”.
In fact, we may as well have just put the two leaders in a green room so their various social media teams can clip up the lines they want, get images of the other looking sweaty or smug, depending on your taste, and post it all straight to Twitter. At least then they would’ve been saved the indignity of pretending either Sunak or Starmer would be able to care about the Coronation until tomorrow’s ballots were done and dusted.
Starmer almost slipped up too. Opening up to his series of attacks on the cost of mortgage repayments, he almost took a bow as he said: “across the house, we’re all looking forward to the celebrations this weekend”.
He meant, of course, toasting to the new King, but for just a second there you could see the hazy images of thousands of Labour councillors floating lovingly in front of his eyes.
And then of course Sunak had to go and bring up Sadiq Khan; the Labour Mayor can’t seem to stop banging on about this whole “ULEZ thing”, which, let’s be honest, just sounds dreadful, even if you do want clean air. Of course, Starmer definitely does want clean air, at least until he realises we can’t afford it.