Johnson and Starmer have fought to a standstill over Partygate and Beergate – now it’s time to refocus

Keir Starmer did not mention lockdown law or accuse the prime minister of lying, and his speech at the start of the debate on the Queen’s Speech was so much the better for it. It was a serious speech, so serious that the Labour MPs seemed bored and disappointed.

But it had the advantage of setting out a clear prospectus for the second half of this parliament: the case against the government and the beginnings of a clear, modest and costed alternative from Labour.

The Labour leader pretended to laugh in an easygoing way while he and Boris Johnson walked side by side to the House of Lords to hear the Gracious Speech. And he did so again while he was back in the Commons and mocked by Graham Stuart, the long-serving Conservative backbencher chosen to make the traditional humorous start-of-term speech. But a couple of feeble jokes about the only opening in the north for Starmer being the opening of a police investigation, and a rhyme of karma and korma, were the only references to the leader of the opposition’s offer yesterday to resign if served with a penalty notice.

Starmer’s speech laid out the charges against Johnson on every subject except Downing Street parties. It was a list of the same lines that have been used by oppositions against governments since Tudor times. The government’s legislative programme was “bereft of ideas or purpose”. Ministers are “too out of touch”, “too tired”; “their time has passed”.

The only new word added to the charge sheet today was “stagflation”, and even that has been recycled from the litany of economic failures past. On top of the cost of living crisis, Starmer said, the country now faces the problem of inflation and stagnant growth at the same time.

The only line that had any life or originality to it was a reworked Churchillian phrase: “Never before have people been asked to pay so much for so little.”

Starmer set out the Labour alternative, a little more crisply and coherently than usual. An emergency Budget “to slash the cost of energy bills and help businesses keep their costs down” paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Interestingly enough, the prime minister in his speech that followed appeared to hint at further deploying “ingenuity and compassion” to help with the cost of living, and said that he and the chancellor would say “more about this in the days to come”. This forced the Treasury to scramble out a statement saying that, no, there would not be an emergency Budget before the usual one in the autumn, but score that as a palpable hit to the leader of the opposition.

The next section of the Labour leader’s speech sounded almost like an early draft of a New-Labour-style election pledge card. He said: “Labour would improve leadership and teaching standards at state schools, funded by ending tax breaks for private schools.” Then he promised more doctors to cut waiting lists for mental health care to four weeks, “paid for by closing loopholes for private equity firms”. I doubt if Starmer has the faintest idea what a private equity firm is, but neither has anyone else, and everyone who isn’t a partner in one agrees that they should pay more tax.

It is, so far, a pretty thin manifesto for an alternative government, and the delivery of the speech was so flat it resembled Lincolnshire, but this is serious politics for serious times.

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The prime minister’s speech, on the other hand, was a gale-force delivery of the same old bluster. “Got the big calls right”, “as I walked through the streets of Kyiv”, “a strong economy with high-wage, high-skill jobs”, “got Brexit done”, and even a joke about how the opposition couldn’t keep up because he was speaking so fast – as if energy, vim and gusto alone could deliver the government’s half-delivered manifesto promises.

Johnson and Starmer have fought each other to a standstill over breaking lockdown laws, with the prime minister admitting he broke the law but isn’t going to resign, while the leader of the opposition insists he didn’t break the law but would resign if he had. The subject is now embarrassing for both of them and they never want to mention it again.

This can only be a good thing, if they now engage in a debate about how best to help people with the cost of living.