Rishi Sunak, Britain's first non-white prime minister, who officially succeeded Liz Truss on Tuesday, had his first PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions) on Wednesday, 26 October, in the House of Commons. And it was fiery.
On the opposite end was Keir Starmer, Leader of the opposition Labour Party, hammering away with questions about the economy, about Home Secretary Suella Braverman's appoiuntment, and about Sunak's personal controversies.
Here are the highlights From Prime Minister Sunak's first PMQs:
On Suella Braverman
Keir Starmer asked the prime minister if Home Secretary Suella Braverman was correct to resign last week for her breach of security.
"Was his home secretary right to resign last week for a breach of security," Starmer enquired.
The prime minister replied: "The home secretary made an error of judgement but she recognised that she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake."
The home secretary will be focused on "cracking down on criminals, on defending our borders," he added.
Starmer shot back by pointing out that promised to uphold "integrity, professionalism, and accountability" in his first statement outside Downing Street.
"But then, with his first act, he appointed a home secretary who was sacked by his predecessor a week ago for deliberately pinging around sensitive Home Office documents from her personal account."
He even accused Sunak of settling for a "grubby deal" trading national security for his leadership election. Starmer was implying that Sunak appointing Braverman as the home secretary was a quid pro quo for her support.
You can read all about the Braverman row here.
On Akhsta Murty's Non-Dom Status
Starmer used the crashing economy as a peg to attack the non-domicile status of Akshata Murty, which allowed her to avoid paying tax on foreign earnings. She is the daughter of Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, who is the founder of Infosys, one of India's largest IT companies.
Before letting go of her non-dom status, Murty avoided paying up to £20 million in tax because it made legal for her to not pay the 39.35 percent tax applied to dividend payouts for resident taxpayers in the UK's highest income tax bracket. Most of her foreign earnings came from Infosys, where she owns a 0.93 percent stake.
The leader of the opposition cheekily said that the government "allows very rich people to live here but register abroad for tax purposes." He said: "I don’t need to explain to the prime minister how non-dom status works – he already knows all about that."
Completely dodging the non-dom subject, Sunak said he will "have to take difficult decisions to restore economic stability."
On the Leaked Video on Diverting Funds
In leaked footage obtained by the British political and cultural magazine The New Statesman, Sunak admitted taking money from deprived urban areas to reallocate it to other parts of the country.
"We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that," he can be heard saying.
Starmer launched a fierce assault on Sunak with respect to the aforementioned controversy. "Rather than apologise or pretend he meant something else, why doesn’t he do the right thing and undo the changes he made to those funding formulas," he said.
The prime minister responded by saying that Starmer "rarely leaves north London" and that "if he does, he will know that there are deprived areas in our rural communities, in our coastal communities, and across the south."
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