Britain’s deputy leaders clash as Rishi Sunak skips school again

Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO U.K.’s weekly run-through.

Living on a prayer: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were missing in action this afternoon — instead attending a prayer service for the *checks notes* health service’s 75th birthday. Moving swiftly on, that left deputy PM Oliver Dowden and his Labour counterpart Angela Rayner to stand in.

But first on that point: Eagle-eyed Labour advisors have noticed that Sunak hasn’t exactly made a virtue of attending the PMQs knockabout. Sunak now has the worst attendance record of any prime minister in history. Both stand-ins came armed with some related stand-up lines — Rayner said Sunak’s non-attendance shows the government has “given up,” while Dowden hit back pretty smartly at the not-always-harmonious relationship between Starmer and Rayner: “Some people trust their deputies to fill in for them.”

What they sparred about: Rayner started on the U.K.’s low-energy economy before moving on to renters’ rights, leading to a call for the government to build more houses. Dowden generally responded by … attacking the last Labour government (which, er, left office 2010) and arguing the government actually is addressing the housing crisis.

Helpful intervention: “Does the deputy prime minister agree the last Labour government was bad?” was, pretty much, Tory MP and one-time leadership contender John Baron’s question.

Skelp of the day: The SNP’s deputy leader Mhairi Black — stepping down at the next election — responded to Dowden’s (actually quite nice) tribute to her by remarking that “we joined the House at the same time and I’m pretty sure we’ll be leaving at the same time too.” Dowden found it funny at least.

The actually important bit: Some Tory backbenchers are getting a bit antsy. Edward Leigh and Richard Drax left the easy questions behind and instead used their questions to press Dowden on plans to house asylum seekers on RAF bases or barges in their constituencies — a key bugbear of right-wing Tories you should expect to hear more about in the coming months. There were fewer pointless government talking-point questions from other Tory MPs too.

Totally non-scientific scores on the door: After a few painful encounters between these two this cleared the low bar of being any better. Rayner’s focus on the housing crisis reflected what Labour feel is a key battleground ahead of the next election.

Dowden 5/10 … Rayner 6/10 … Restlessness on the Tory backbenches 7/10 … and rising.

Good news for fans of the backups: DPMQs will return again this time next week, as Sunak jets off to the NATO summit in Vilnius.