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Boris Johnson was accused of “ruling in hindsight” during a series of U-turns, as he appeared before MPs at PMQ for the first time since July.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said the prime minister “made it up on the fly.”
And he said even Johnson’s own MPs had “run out of patience” after what he claimed were 12 U-turns over the summer.
The prime minister responded by calling Sir Keir a “captain in hindsight” over the debacle of the test results.
He accused the Labor leader of “getting on the train, opposing a policy he supported two weeks ago.”
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford claimed Johnson had made eight U-turns this year, calling for a ninth to extend the government’s job retention plan, which ends next month, echoing a call made by Sir Keir.
The prime minister insisted that “indefinite leave” was not the answer to help the economy overcome the pandemic.
With the complaints at the conservative banks about the government’s recent performance, Boris Johnson needed a good PMQ to mark a return to parliament.
His political opponents, perhaps unsurprisingly, criticized the number of U-turns in policies in recent months.
While ministers have repeatedly said they are responding to changes in science as the pandemic progresses, the speed and frequency of policy changes is at the core of concern among some conservative supporters.
Keir Starmer reverted to what some supporters have called a “forensic” interrogation style by pressuring the prime minister to provide details on the test results crisis.
Boris Johnson responded with a wide-ranging attack on the Labor leader that led to an irritable exchange.
But with another change in policy, this time on local closures in Trafford and Bolton, which took place while the prime minister was in the despatch box, it seems unlikely that his performance was enough to silence critics, including those of your own party.
In heated exchanges, Sir Keir told the prime minister: “This has been a lost summer. The government should have spent it preparing for fall and winter.
“Instead, they have gone from one crisis to another, from one U-turn to another.”
He accused the government of “serial incompetence” and asked: “Will the prime minister take responsibility and ultimately dominate it?”
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Johnson responded by citing a series of alleged U-turns made by Sir Keir in the past and, in a reference to his predecessor as Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of supporting “a politician who condoned the IRA and wanted to get out of NATO.”
Spokesman Sir Lindsey Hoyle intervened to warn the prime minister “to answer the questions put to him.”
Sir Keir, clearly angry, said: “As Director of Public Prosecutions, I prosecuted serious terrorists for five years, working with the intelligence and security forces and the police in Northern Ireland.
“I ask the prime minister to have the decency to withdraw that comment.”
In subsequent remarks, Labor sources said they would not take the matter further, but added that the prime minister had supported a peerage for former Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox, who had once been a member of a far-left party she championed. an IRA attack.
