What time is PMQs today? When to watch Rishi Sunak face first Prime Minister’s Questions since local elections
Rishi Sunak will face Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions today – their first meeting since the Tories suffered heavy losses in last week’s local elections.
Labour gained 643 councillors across England and took control of another 22 local authorities after Thursday’s vote, while the Conservatives lost 957 seats and 48 councils.
It was also a good election for the Lib Dems, who gained 12 local authorities and 415 seats, and the Greens, who added 200 seats and won an outright majority on a council for the first time, in Mid Suffolk.
What time is PMQs today?
PMQs begins at the usual time of 12pm, and the session will last for about half an hour. You can watch PMQs live on this page, and it will also be broadcast on the UK Parliament YouTube channel.
On TV PMQs airs live on BBC News and Sky News, and is accessible online through BBC iPlayer and the Sky News live YouTube stream.
What should we expect from PMQs?
Sir Keir will be keen to heap more pressure on his rival after last week’s election results, and position Labour as the party best equipped to guide Britain forward after the next general election.
He has warned his Shadow Cabinet the “hardest part lies ahead” as he welcomed signs that voters are returning to the party, after it lost voters in 2019.
“The fact that Labour won in all parts of the country was a sign of the strides we have made. People who turned away from us during the Corbyn years and the Brexit years are coming back,” he said.
“But there is understandably a lot of scepticism about politics out there and now we need to go from reassurance to hope. We need to show that we will be a big reforming government bringing hope of a better life for working people.”
Mr Sunak, meanwhile, has promised to work “night and day” to deliver on the priorities he has set for the nation as he looks to right the ship following Thursday’s results.
Former levelling up secretary Simon Clarke said the Prime Minister’s “major mistake” of dropping housebuilding had played a role in the poor performance.
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, however, blamed heavy Tory losses on the pandemic and the Ukraine war, while also noting the party had been in power for “a long time”.
She conceded that voters were “frustrated and angry”, but claimed the Prime Minister was starting to regain the public’s trust, despite some Tories blaming him for shedding almost 1,000 councillors.
She told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme: “If we could look at the context for the whole local election, we’ve been in power for a long time.
“We’ve just had a pandemic which has disrupted many people’s lives and has had consequences for the economy, as has the war in Ukraine.”
