Sir Keir may be right that the PM doesn’t get Britain but do his comments sow further division? - Jayne Dowle

This breath-taking level of personal wealth actually represents a dip of £201m in net worth compared to the previous year’s Rich List assessment, when Richmond MP Mr Sunak became the first politician to join its rankings since the List began in 1989.

Speaking at the first Prime Minister’s Questions of 2024, the Labour leader raised eyebrows when he insisted that Mr Sunak has no idea what a “cost of living crisis feels like” and “doesn't understand what it's like to wait for a hospital appointment”.

“Doesn't the country deserve so much better than a Prime Minister who simply doesn't get Britain?” Starmer said.

Now Number 10 is up in arms, arguing that the Labour leader was being racist towards Mr Sunak, who was born in Southampton, Hampshire. His father Yashvir, a GP, was born and raised in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, what we now know as Kenya. His mother Usha, a pharmacist, was born in Tanganyika, a former sovereign state part of present-day Tanzania; her family emigrated to the UK in the 1960s, her mother reportedly having to sell all her wedding jewellery to fund the move.

Sir Keir and Mr Sunak were trading blows across the floor, when in an obviously unscripted moment, the Labour leader came out with: “New year, new nonsense. Every week he stands here and tells the country they should be thanking him, not questioning him.

“Point out that the view on the ground is very different to that from his private jet and he says you're talking the country down. He just doesn't get it, he doesn't get what a cost-of-living crisis feels like.

“He doesn't know any schools where kids no longer turn up, and he doesn't understand what it's like to wait for a hospital appointment.”

I suppose we should applaud Starmer, hardly known as a rabble-rouser, for at least speaking with passion. However, as we approach a year which will be dominated by campaigning for the General Election, it makes the heart sink to think we already appear to have both reached rock bottom and witnessed yet more seeds of division sown.

A spokesman for Starmer insisted the attack was “absolutely not… dog whistle” politics: “[It’s about] the way in which the prime minister constantly talks as if everything is going brilliantly in this country and that is simply not the lived experience of hardworking families up and down this country who are struggling to get a hospital appointment, struggling to get a dentist appointment, who are dealing with the cost of living.

“The way in which the prime minister speaks makes it clear he just has no appreciation of the reality of life and the struggles that people are facing.”

One of the better-sketched out plans for Labour’s General Election manifesto includes a plan for dentistry that will include 700,000 more appointments than at present to be paid for by ending non-dom tax status for the super-rich. Mr Sunak’s wife has previously benefited from non-dom tax status, which means an individual only has to pay tax on money earned in the UK, but not on foreign income.

It’s not the first time, actually, that Sir Keir has had a pop at Mr Sunak for being out-of-touch with reality. Last April, in another heated Commons exchange over non-dom status and pensions, the Labour leader described the Prime Minister as being “so out of touch that he looks at a petrol pump and a debit card like they’ve just arrived from Mars.”

Sir Keir is right to highlight that Mr Sunak, who has two daughters attending private school, seems to not appreciate the very real fiscal challenges millions of less-privileged families face every day. He is also right to highlight the fact that our Prime Minister often chooses to glide oleaginously over the facts. He should continue to do this.

However, it would be a shame if the two major political leaders in our proudly multicultural country lower debate yet lower to cheap and nasty personal attacks. Sir Keir needs to realise that what he says in the heat of the moment might have been meant with purpose, but it will always be in danger of being spun out of control.