Keir Starmer has used prime minister’s questions to portray Rishi Sunak as “insulated from reality” over the cost of living, and to make a notably personal attack on the PM’s refusal to end the non-domiciled tax status from which his wife benefited.
Sunak is “so out of touch that he looks at a petrol pump and a debit card like they’ve just arrived from Mars”, Starmer said, a reference to previous awkward-looking photo opportunities involving the prime minister.
“He smiles his way through the cost of living crisis while putting other people’s taxes up,” the Labour leader said. “Is it any wonder that he doesn’t have a clue how food prices are hammering families across the country?”
Labelling Sunak “Mr 24 tax rises”, Starmer sought to contrast this with the continued existence of the scheme allowing people to avoid UK tax on outside earnings by claiming non-domiciled status, as Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, did.
Sunak was refusing to tackle “his beloved non-dom status”, Starmer told the Commons.
He said: “It means that at every possible opportunity, he has voted to put taxes on working people up while at the same time taking every possible opportunity to protect a tax avoidance scheme that helps his own finances. Why is the prime minister telling people across the country their taxes must go up so that his can stay low?”
After Sunak responded by saying the Labour leader had benefited from a change to pensions rules because of his former job as director of public prosecutions, Starmer said he would end this “whether it affected me or not”, adding: “He refuses to scrap the status that benefits him and his family.”
Starmer opened the session by citing a comment by George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor, calling Liz Truss and her then chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, “political vandals” for the autumn mini-budget that spooked financial markets.
“They like to pretend that it was all just one week of madness last autumn. But the truth is, it’s been 13 years of failure,” Starmer said.
After Sunak said people were benefiting from higher wages and other help with the cost of living, Starmer replied: “I’m genuinely fascinated to know: does he really think that everything is fine or is he just clueless about life outside of his bubble?”
He added: “It’s not just his refusal to take any responsibility for the damage they’ve done – the crashed economy, the hit to living standards. It’s also he refuses to take the action that’s needed.”
Sunak, in turn, said Starmer had no economic ideas beyond ending non-dom status, saying the Labour leader had “already spent the money that he claims he would raise on five different things”.
