PMQs verdict: Jeremy Corbyn"s leaked texts give him the upper hand

Key points

A rowdy exchange, in which the Speaker interrupted four times to call for order. Jeremy Corbyn returned to a consistent theme this winter: the funding crisis in social care and the broader strain on the NHS. This time he came armed with what he described as leaked texts, exchanged between David Hodge, leader of Surrey county council, and a mystery official named “Nick” in the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Surrey had until this week planned to hold a referendum on a 15% rise in council tax to pay for the spiralling costs of social care, but on Tuesday abandoned the idea. Corbyn said the texts indicated the government had cut a secret deal with Surrey council – presumably to provide extra funding in return for the referendum being called off – and demanded to know the details, and whether the same deal would apply to councils across the country.

He wondered if it was merely coincidence that the health secretary and the chancellor represented Surrey constituencies. Theresa May dodged the question but said every council had been given the opportunity to raise a 3% “precept” to fund social care provision. She accused Corbyn, in a nod to US politics, of presenting “alternative facts” and claimed the Conservatives would spend £0.5tn on the NHS during the course of this parliament, whereas Labour wished to borrow the same amount.

Snap verdict

Flash rhetoric and clever questions are fine at PMQs, but facts are better – and Corbyn demonstrated how nothing beats a good, old-fashioned, leak-inspired ambush. His first two questions were a bit vague and waffly, he sought to lay a trap with his third, but then he surprised May with his leaked text allegations and, to his credit, he kept pressing her for an answer as to whether Surrey was getting a special deal for the rest of the session.

It was a successful hit. May stonewalled his questions quite forcefully, but without being able to conceal the fact that she was not answering his key question. Even without Corbyn’s Surrey deepthroat, May’s answers would have been unsatisfactory – she has not got anything substantial to say about her long-term review of care, and her attack lines on Labour on health, about spending, read as if they have come from David Cameron’s pre-2015 PMQs file – but having a strong attack story meant Corbyn easily had the upper hand.

Memorable lines

“Congratulating NHS staff on their hard work is one thing, paying them properly quite another” – Corbyn on NHS funding

“What we get from Labour is alternative facts. What they really need is an alternative leader” – May channels Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway

PMQs verdict: Jeremy Corbyn"s leaked texts give him the upper hand

Corbyn’s support for my NHS reinstatement bill was not inept | Letters from Caroline Lucas MP and others

I have no wish to intrude on the Labour leadership debates and I have no idea whether former shadow health minister Heidi Alexander is right in her critique of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership style, but for her aides to pick out Corbyn’s support for my NHS reinstatement bill as evidence both of his “ineptitude” and of his shadow chancellor’s “undermining” her strikes me as both desperate and depressing (Shadow cabinet inept and shoddy, says MP, 20 August). My private members’ bill, drawn up after extensive consultation with health experts and health service users, would have reversed the creeping marketisation of the NHS – under both New Labour and the Conservatives – and stripped away the costly market mechanisms that waste NHS money and lead to inefficiencies and the fragmentation of services.

Perhaps a more interesting question is why the rest of the Labour party didn’t join their SNP, Plaid and Lib Dem colleagues in giving it their backing too. With a few honourable exceptions, they chose to abstain instead. Yet this is precisely the kind of policy a successful Labour party would surely be expected to promote – as well as demonstrating a greater willingness to work alongside colleagues from other parties on those areas where there is common ground between us.

Overcoming party tribalism and finding practical ways of working together will be crucial to any hope of progressive policies finding a majority at the next election – whether that be on the NHS, tackling inequality, putting rail in public hands, or seriously addressing the climate crisis. Real leadership means being bold and honest enough to recognise that there’s far too much at stake to refuse to cooperate for the common good.
Caroline Lucas MP
Green, Brighton Pavilion

• Heidi Alexander’s self-justifying piece would have made David Brent blush. Alexander had perhaps the easiest job in Labour front-rank politics – defending a properly funded, publicly run health service free at the point of use – yet she managed to reduce her portfolio to dull, uninspiring managerialism. On every count she flings at John McDonnell for “undermining” her – his joining a junior doctors’ picket line, his gathering the views of frontline health activists and his support for Caroline Lucas’s NHS reinstatement bill – McDonnell clearly spoke for the vast majority of Labour supporters and members.
John Medhurst
Hove, East Sussex

• Jeremy Corbyn’s support for a National Education Service is welcome but hardly “courageous” (Zoe Williams, 15 August). None of his statements to date have spelt out the urgent reforms needed to England’s segregated and hierarchical system of secondary schools. He could confront the need for an integrated 14-19 curriculum and discuss the future of the GCSE. He could propose new forms of local and regional accountability. He could discuss fair admissions, measures to reduce religious segregation and how to end, not extend, the 11-plus. Without more detail Labour’s policy on secondary schools will, sadly, remain an empty space. Even more courage is needed, Jeremy.
David Chaytor
Todmorden, West Yorkshire

• It is a sad day for British democracy that Momentum – the left-wing ginger group active within the Labour Party – has seemingly turned its back on non-violence (Momentum no longer rules out acts of violence, 20 August). Momentum’s unwillingness to sustain its previous principled opposition to violence is because some of the fringe groups who are associated with them want a licence from the left to face down neo-fascist groups fist-by-bloody-fist. Aligning this sort of macho political posturing with what the brave men and women who resisted the Nazis did is an insult.
Martin Jones
New Barnet, Hertfordshire

Corbyn’s support for my NHS reinstatement bill was not inept | Letters from Caroline Lucas MP and others