Starmer and Sunak trade on the 'I'm not Liz Truss' card

My test for the BBC Question Time special was how honest Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak would be about the trade-offs facing the next government.

- JOHN RENTOUL

So it was encouraging when Keir Starmer, once he had shaken off the inevitable first question about whether he really thought Jeremy Corbyn would make a “great prime minister”, said that the problem that bothered him about delivering for people was “politicians not being honest about how long it’s going to take”.

He was answering a question about NHS waiting lists, and he said he would make a start on day one, “if elected”. But it didn’t take long, under further interrogation by Fiona Bruce, the presenter, for him to cave in to the temptation to make unrealistic promises. Within seconds of talking about the problem of politicians not being honest, he said a Labour government would clear the backlog completely “in the course of the parliament”.

Given that it took the last Labour government three parliaments to get the NHS into a decent state, this seemed far from being straightforward with people. Some waffle about reform and paying NHS staff “properly” for working weekends is not going to transform the service in five short years, especially if “the money isn’t there” – as Starmer keeps saying, rightly, about the Tory plans.