‘Will Tories be so jubilant when Rishi starts making tough decisions’

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle feared excitable Tory MPs would damage the furniture with all the banging and roaring. What a change from the glumbucket faces that dominated the Conservative benches just seven days earlier as Liz Truss fought for survival.The former Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen and neither was the one before that.Allies Jacob Rees-Mogg, Kit Malthouse and Wendy Morton, unceremoniously booted out of government on Tuesday, were exiled to the far corners of the backbenches.The session began with some football banter between a Labour MP from Southampton, Mr Sunak’s birthplace, and was followed by a Tory committed to being a backbench troublemaker feigning horror at not being given a government job.But at 12.04pm Sir Keir rose to his feet for the first of his six allotted questions. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking during Prime Minister’s Questions (Image: GETTY)Would it be the clash of the titans or, as many feared, the clash of the clipboards?Sir Keir and Mr Sunak both have a history of veering towards managerial rather than rousing. But the Prime Minister and the Labour leader were both clearly up for the fight.Sir Keir went for what many would consider a low blow by using a couple of questions to raise the non-dom tax status that propelled Mr Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, into the headlines for reportedly saving her millions.Sir Keir said: ‘I don’t need to explain to the Prime Minister how non-dom status works, he already knows all about that.’When the Labour leader chuntered about the new premier needing a mandate from the people, Mr Sunak was quick to point out his opponent had played an instrumental role in attempts to overturn the decision of 17.4 million people to back Britain’s exit from the European Union.He took a swipe at Sir Keir for supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for No 10 and Labour’s ‘soft on crime’ record.The ten minute bout went down so well with the Prime Minister’s MPs they cried ‘more, more’.It was a good first outing for the new premier but whether his backbenchers will be quite so jubilant when Mr Sunak starts making the ‘difficult’ decisions he has warned of remains to be seen.