Keir Starmer put on his best barrister act during a fiery PMQs to build the case against Boris Johnson

Today’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was nearly undermined at the start, when Andrea Jenkyns, a Conservative loyalist, couldn’t unmute herself and got through the first paragraph of her long loyal question before she was cut off.

Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, asked Boris Johnson if he wanted to answer it anyway, as he presumably knew what the question was. The prime minister obviously thought that would expose the charade of Tory questions, and chose not to.

Johnson knew what Keir Starmer’s questions would be, as well, but there was nothing fake about their exchanges. The Labour leader has been accused of being too much like the lawyer he used to be, and he has been praised for his more political performances in the Commons, but today he deployed the prosecuting counsel act to great effect.

He used his first question to ask about Johnson’s alleged “pile the bodies high” comment, just to get the prime minister’s denial on the record. “I’ll leave it there for now,” he said, but suggested he would come back to it at a later stage of what he obviously expects to be a long trial. He merely noted in passing that the Ministerial Code requires ministers to tell the truth in the House of Commons.

Then Starmer devoted his five remaining questions to the question of who had initially paid for the redecoration of the prime minister’s flat. Johnson said that he had paid for it “personally” – spitting out the word with an unintended emphasis that could have been his subconscious speaking, resenting having to cough up £58,000.

That was his answer – or, rather, his non-answer – to the question each time Starmer repeated it: “I have covered the cost;” “I paid for it.”

Members of the jury of public opinion could see that he wasn’t answering the question he had actually been asked, which was about who had paid for the redecoration “initially” – Starmer repeated the word. Who paid for it before Johnson decided – reluctantly, as we could hear – that he himself would have to stump up the cost, which amounted to twice the average UK salary?

Starmer had some theatrical touches, but they were the kind that a prosecuting barrister addresses to the jury, rather than those of a politician addressing a crowd of supporters. Starmer offered four possible answers to his question: the taxpayer, the Conservative Party, a donor, or the prime minister himself. “I’m making it easier for the prime minister,” he said. “I’m making it multiple choice.”

When Johnson failed to answer again – “I have met the requirements I’m obliged to meet in full” – Starmer turned to the imaginary jury to observe as an aside that this is the sort of thing that has people “screaming at their televisions: ‘Answer the question!’”

The Labour leader messed up his final question, which was supposed to be an interim summing up using the word “sleaze” in as many different sentences as possible, but he left a “not” out of his closing sentence which made it sound as if he was saying that the British people wanted more of it from this government.

But he is building his case for a trial that will run for many, many weeks, and although the defendant tried not to show his nerves, some members of the jury of public opinion who have not yet made up their minds might have detected a certain amount of overkill in the bravado.

Johnson responded to Starmer’s last question by launching himself into a theatrical performance of his own, a show of synthetic anger at the Labour Party’s carping and negativity. Last week the opposition had criticised him for doing everything he could to build ventilators, and now we are sending them to India (no, it doesn’t have to make sense). Longer ago, the opposition had criticised St Catherine of Bingham for being a crony, before she turned out to be the angel of vaccines. What is more, he ranted on, the Labour Party had opposed Brexit.

For the rest of the session, Johnson did better, claiming confidently and repeatedly that the British people are not interested in the curtains in Downing Street but in the vaccine rollout, his plan for the future and his vision for the country. He has to hope that he is right, because the prosecutor is painstakingly building his case – and the spare prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was in Wembley today, being photographed visiting small businesses.