Rishi Sunak just can’t shake the ghosts of prime ministers past. Liz Truss was the spectre at the feast as PMQs resumed on Wednesday for the first time following the Easter break.
The former PM was not immediately visible in the Commons chamber for Prime Minister’s Questions but remains the talk of Westminster with her new book Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons From the Only Conservative in the Room.
As Ms Truss tours TV studios on a relentless and sometimes eccentric promotion of the book, Sir Keir Starmer joked that he was one of the few people to possess an unsigned copy.
Her conspiracy-laden defence of her time in 10 Downing Street - at 49 days, the shortest of any prime minister - was a PMQs gift to the Labour leader, who said it was “the Tory Party’s obsession with wild, unfunded tax cuts that crashed the economy”.
The present PM had a ready retort, which appeared to leave Sir Keir on the back foot. Mr Sunak recapped that he had pointed out the folly of Ms Truss’s policies when they ran against each for the Conservative leadership, while Sir Keir had campaigned to put Jeremy Corbyn in No10.
Drawing raucous cheers from the Tory benches, the PM said: “All I would say is he ought to spend a bit less time reading that book and a bit more time reading his deputy leader’s tax advice.”
Angela Rayner is under investigation by Greater Manchester Police after allegations about her property history made in another book, a biography by the Tory tax exile Lord Ashcroft. She denies any wrongdoing and Sir Keir continues to back his number two, who was sat next to him at PMQs.
Once the Commons had settled down, the Labour leader accused the “billionaire” PM of “smearing a working-class woman”. But the Conservative MPs were still chuntering and heckling, glad that Mr Sunak had diverted the conversation from Ms Truss’s brief but disastrous tenure in No10.
The former PM did pay a rare visit to the Commons on Tuesday when she spoke out against Mr Sunak’s “unconservative” Bill to outlaw smoking by younger generations.
Ms Truss said during the debate: “If people want to vote for finger-wagging, nannying, control freaks, there are plenty of them to choose from on the benches opposite... If they want to have freedom, that is why they vote Conservative.”
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill has also been assailed by Boris Johnson, another past PM fond of shaking his gory locks at Mr Sunak.
For the party of cigar-chomping Winston Churchill to seek to ban smoking was “absolutely nuts”, according to Mr Johnson, who alleges he fell victim to a Macbeth-worthy assassination by his successor.
The Bill passed comfortably at its first Commons hurdle with Labour backing, but Tory MPs were given a free vote and 57 of them opposed it, including Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, while 106 abstained.
Ms Badenoch said the legislation risks undermining the principle of equality under the law, and denied she was currying favour with the Tory Right for a future leadership bid.
When it comes to PMs, voters have been given a banquet of choice by the Conservatives in recent years, and will likely be served up another leadership battle if the polls are correct and Mr Sunak goes down to a landslide defeat by Sir Keir at the next election.
