Sunak’s Gordon Brown moment. And like Gordon Brown in an election year too. I’d love to say I feel sorry for him but I actually don’t.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A series of Conservative MPs also rounded on Sunak for insensitivity after he pressed ahead with an apparently prepared attack line about transgender people, just after being told by Keir Starmer that Esther Ghey was in the public gallery.

Listing what he called broken Labour promises, the prime minister said: “I think I counted almost 30 in the last year: pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman – although in fairness that was only 99% of a U-turn.”

It emerged later that No 10 was trying to arrange a meeting between Sunak and Brianna’s family, at a time to suit them, to discuss online safety among young people, one of several issues that have come to the fore from her murder.

While some colleagues leapt to Sunak’s defence – the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, tweeted that it was “shameful of Starmer to link his own inability to be clear on the matter of sex and gender directly to her grief” – several Tory MPs expressed disquiet.

Dehenna Davison, another former minister, tweeted that it was “disappointing to hear jokes being made at the trans community’s expense”, adding: “Our words in the house resonate right across our society and we all need to remember that.”

Asked repeatedly why Sunak had made a joke at the expense of trans people, the chancellor told the BBC this was “taking these comments out of context”, before eventually refusing to engage with questions about whether the prime minister should apologise.

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