Starmer doing quite significant damage to Johnson over his record on care homes right now parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/c2…
That was brutal. Each question valid and specific. No credible answer to any of them.
It's quite clear - you could have predicted it months ago - what the Starmer/Johnson dynamic will be: lawyerly specifics vs broad-brushstroke warbling. That'll do for those disposed to support Johnson anyway. But it will not for those who are not.
Usual caveat that most people don't watch PMQs etc. But if the weekly exchange proceeds regularly along these lines, it will do damage.
One thing which is troubling me. Starmer told Johnson that the official govt guidance to care homes until March 12th was "it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected".
Johnson replied: "It wasn't true that the advice said that".
Here is the guidance. It does say that. gov.uk/government/pub… 
Maybe I'm missing something - someone point it out if so - but that seems to me as if the prime minister misled the House.
Note the speed of the Starmer letter following this up. Proper efficient opposition.
Johnson refuses to correct the record after Starmer's letter, kicks back hard.
The letter, quite insanely, seems to suggest that the mere act of opposition is intolerable, as "the public expect us to work together".
But the argument itself is very weak. The guidance Starmer referred to was only withdrawn on March 13th gov.uk/government/pub…
By that time it was quite clear that there was transmission in the community. Ie: Look at this BBC report from February 29th. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-516834…
Even if that weren't the case, it would have made sense to have care homes take measures to protect against infection in case transmission did start to occur in the UK, which there was very good reason to believe it would.
There's also one final broader point. During the Brexit debate, much was made of the fact that the £350 figure helped Leave, because it kept the issue of UK payments to the EU in the headlines.
Johnson and Cummings are now getting into a dispute over the intricacy of their policy over care homes during coronavirus.
