Sunak accused of lying by Starmer in election campaign

Further cracks appear in the Tory campaign, and there's a bit of the UK's uncodified constitution in here as well

Relevant questions based on the video

What was the fallout from the first leaders debate, particularly regarding Rishi Sunak and tax hike allegations?

How did Keir Starmer respond to the accusations made by Rishi Sunak during the debate?

Correct answers

The biggest fallout from the debate was centered around repeated tax hike allegations against Rishi Sunak, claiming that Labour's policies would increase taxes by £2,000.

Keir Starmer took some time to respond to the tax hike allegations made by Rishi Sunak during the debate, eventually calling it garbage.

So what does this have to do with the British constitution?

This serves to illustrate the inter-related nature of Politics as a subject, linking topics as diverse as voting behaviour and the constitution. Scholars of British Politics should know that Britain is often referred to as having an unwritten constitution. It would be more accurate to say that the UK does possess a written constitution, it's just that it's not all written down in one place. As such, it is said to be a uncodified.

A very good example of a key part of our governing architecture is the set of rules covering what ministers can and cannot do. This is known as the ministerial code. This document is one of the first things an incoming minister receives on being appointed to office, and its contents were largely kept secret until the early 1990s, until the then Prime Minister, John Major, decided that the version used at that time (called Questions of Procedure for Ministers) should be made public, as part of his opening up government initiatives.

So in what sense did Sunak potentially act in contravention of the code? Well, it could be in the first section where his actions may have brought him into conflict is in Section 5 where ministers are warned that they must protect the impartiality of the civil service (going back to the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854, the three key principles of the British civil service are permanence, impartiality, and anonymity). Therefore there are questions about civil service bias if their research benefits one political party over another. Even more clear, perhaps, is Section 6, where it is stated that government resources must not be used for party matters. Obviously there is a certain degree of overlap between the two sections, and Sunak may have fallen foul of breaking either part of the code, or both. Whether or not there is a full investigation, it is not going to do the Conservative Party any favours in the polls. There was once a time when Sunak was more popular than the party he governed. Now, like a Shakespearean play where a tragedy unfolds that is the protagonist's own making, those days seem a long way off.