He did so against an immediate backdrop of political chaos.

It took just days for the government’s bullishness on its flagship welfare bill to reimagine itself as meek acquiescence. Facing possible defeat in the commons, Starmer approved one final, eleventh-hour concession on his government’s welfare proposals. The result is a gutted bill: legislation straddling the liminal plane between existence and expiration.

It was left to Sir Stephen Timms, the disabilities minister, to banish the bill into political purgatory at around 5.26 pm yesterday. After crunch talks between Downing Street and Labour’s rebel representatives, Timms told the commons that changes to restrict eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment (Pip) will be delayed until after a review of the disability benefit, instead of coming into force in November 2026 as set out in the bill.

The government’s original welfare reforms were designed to save approximately £5 billion by 2030. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has decreed that, as a result of Starmer’s concessions, the government savings amount to zero, nothing.

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Rachel Reeves has been forced back to the drawing board by Labour MPs. The PM can no longer rely on his massive working majority, of no less than 165 MPs, to rubber-stamp his difficult decisions.

In the end, the zombie welfare bill staggered over its first commons hurdle with 335 votes in favour versus 260 against. Despite Starmer’s successive U-turns, 49 MPs still voted against his reforms. And so the prime minister’s majority was sliced by over half (to 75).

Starmer vowed to end the chaos — the steady churn of psychodrama that sickened the nation of Conservative rule. That was the central promise of Starmerism. But the scenes in the commons yesterday were eerily reminiscent of the decadence of late Conservatism. Not since an October 2022 opposition day vote on fracking, which preceded Liz Truss’ downfall as PM, has the chamber been such a pit of political acrimony.

Starmer’s task now is to show yesterday’s drama was a blip — and not the latest lamentable loop on the doom spiral of decay.

It’s a cruel reality for any prime minister — especially one whose premiership is, in simple temporal terms at least, relatively fresh. But it is sweet succour for a leader of the opposition. Starmer seized on prime ministerial implosions as LOTO. With the PM exposed, how did Kemi Badenoch fare today?

The Tory leader has been getting her practice in as a commons performer. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, stepped in to helm recent sessions of PMQs — but Badenoch has returned the favour by subbing herself in for shadow ministers. She responded (in Philp’s stead) to the home secretary’s statement last month on the Casey report. And she took on work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall in the commons yesterday, delivering a typically combative response in the welfare bill debate.

She continued in this vein this afternoon. Rising to the opposition despatch box, the Conservative leader first sought an admission that the welfare bill will amount to zero “savings” after the government’s U-turns.

The prime minister defended his watered-down bill, saying it would “rebalance Universal Credit” and that it was “consistent” with the principles he had spoken to “throughout”. The evasion prompted Badenoch to answer her own question. The welfare bill had been “completely gutted”, she said, and it “doesn’t save any money — it is going to cost billions”.

The Tory leader added: “This is the first prime minister in history to propose a bill to save money who ended up with a bill that costs money.”

It did not take long for Badenoch to direct her fire at Rachel Reeves, the embattled chancellor. Gesturing to the government frontbench, she said Reeves looked “absolutely miserable”.

“Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence.

Badenoch asked: “In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?”

Starmer refused to back his chancellor in so many words. Rather, he used the opportunity to mock the Conservative leader’s PMQs performances, which he maintained “always” cheer him up. “[Badenoch] makes a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are”, Starmer added.

At cabinet yesterday, Starmer leapt to the defence of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who has faced a similarly unrelenting torrent of hostile briefings in recent days. The PM declared he “will not countenance” criticism of McSweeney, crediting him with Labour’s general election victory in 2024.

Today, albeit in a public setting, the PM refused to do the same for his chancellor. It’s an inconsistency Starmer should avoid any suggestion of — lest excitable commentators begin to over-interpret his intentions.

Indeed, at that moment — whatever No 10 went on to clarify later — Badenoch’s question demanded an answer. The risk was obvious: the PM’s decision not to explicitly guarantee Reeves’ position would contribute to the sense of instability and drama.

As the prime minister equivocated, a lone tear rolled down Reeves’ face. The scene was quickly clipped up for social media, sending Westminster into a frenzy of speculation.

A spokesperson later confirmed that Reeves was reacting to a “personal matter, which — as you would expect — we are not going to get into”. They added: “The chancellor will be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.”

Reeves is reported to have had an “altercation” with commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle prior to PMQs.

With the chancellor visibly upset, Badenoch’s response bordered on being overly personal. She remarked: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she will stay in place.”

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Starmer, for his final contribution, issued what in other circumstances could be read as a fulsome statement of support. He listed a series of purported Labour achievements, celebrating each as a “promise made [and] delivered”. He closed: “We’re only getting started. The chancellor has led on all these issues, and we’re grateful to her for it.”

But having refused to guarantee Reeves’ position, this remark could just as easily be interpreted as a statement of thanks before a summary sacking.

As PMQs concluded, Reeves was met and comforted by her sister Ellie, who serves as Labour chair. They left the chamber together.

No 10 went on to insist that the chancellor is “going nowhere” and that she has the prime minister’s “full backing”. As for why Starmer did not express his support for Reeves at the despatch box, the spokesperson responded: “He has [backed Reeves] plenty of times, he doesn’t need to repeat it every time the leader of the opposition speculates about Labour politicians.”

But the brutal reality of politics is that Reeves’ standing has been vastly diminished as a result of the welfare climbdown yesterday. Her reputation as an “iron chancellor” — of certain resolve and unyielding will to sell tough decisions to a squeamish party — has been undermined by the evidence of Labour’s welfare fiasco.

This reputation, forged over years in opposition, was the source of her political authority. It is unsurprising then, that speculation as to her future has refused to abate.

Briefings against Reeves and her policies are an increasingly recurrent feature of the political news cycle. Her policies have been rebuffed on more than one occasion by Labour MPs. Crucially, some of her colleagues have come to the conclusion that the chancellor is the common denominator underpinning their party’s travails.

Starmer will know the risks of losing a chancellor so early into his premiership, of course.

For all the speculation today and Badenoch’s targeted attacks, the government’s woes are far bigger than any one person. The welfare debacle reflected a collective failure of strategy, management and authority: a total political breakdown.

A single sacking will not repair the disorder it revealed — or the damage it wreaked.

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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The rationale, according to a briefing secured by the Express newspaper, concerned deputy prime minister’s questions (DPMQs) — and a plot to “wrong-foot” Angela Rayner. Commons convention dictates that when the prime minister is otherwise engaged, on some foreign jaunt with fellow G7 leaders for instance, the opposition should mirror the government in sending out a senior subordinate.

Badenoch, deliberately deputy-less, has chosen to pick from a rotating roster of top Tories. But the available field is narrower than her frontbench suggests.

The Conservative leader would not pick an Edward Argar (shadow health secretary) or a Gareth Bacon (shadow transport) — their low profiles make them unsuited to the occasion. Nor is she likely to select Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who has generated his own spotlight this parliament.

It’s easy to see how Badenoch’s no-deputy gambit could get rather awkward: can she continue to overlook her most effective, and ambitious, shadow cabinet colleague?

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Alex Burghart stood in late last year on Badenoch’s behalf. As one of the Tory leader’s trusty lieutenants, his performance was not interpreted as an audition; the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster remains the closest thing Badenoch has to a de facto deputy.

Today was the turn of Chris Philp. There were some guessing games in the lobby yesterday afternoon as to which shadow minister Badenoch might select to scrutinise Rayner in her stead. The shadow home secretary, given the nature of the news agenda, was the obvious pick.

Philp is a curious commons performer. His delivery style lends itself to caricature, and self-parody. Every word is wrestled from deep inside of him and forced into the open with breathless fury.

Philp favours brute force over finesse; his contributions are punchy but not always convincing.

The physicality of his delivery projects an enthusiasm for the cut and thrust of politics. But the best commons performers make it all look effortless. Philp’s style, stern and a bit shouty, looks unmistakably effortful.

The shadow home secretary began by referencing the press conference he conducted yesterday, alongside Badenoch, on the grooming gangs scandal. He spoke of the conversations he had with victims and their families in a lengthy first question.

Philp said victims believed the scandal had been “covered up” by the authorities and maintained that their confidence in the inquiry, announced in response to Louise Casey’s landmark report, is paramount.

He told the House: “The survivors told us they will only have confidence in an inquiry if it is independently led, has full statutory powers, covers all 50 towns affected including Bradford, if those who covered this up are prosecuted, if foreign perpetrators are all deported, if survivors are closely involved and if it is set up before the summer recess.

“Can the deputy prime minister give the survivors and their families those assurances?”

Philp’s ask that all “foreign perpetrators [should be] deported” was the most obviously political element in an otherwise constructive-sounding question. The shadow home secretary would draw further connections between immigration and grooming gangs later in his line of inquiry.

Rayner responded to the tone of Philp’s inaugural question, rather than its substance. She “thanked” the shadow home secretary for his approach and for putting survivors “at the heart of his question”.

The deputy PM added: “I think it is absolutely right that we all look at what has happened over the last couple of decades, the countless reports that we have had and we look to implement that.

“He is absolutely right to also talk about the confidence people must have in that independent inquiry.”

Philp’s follow-up scuppered any pretence of consensus. He accused Starmer of “smearing” campaigners as he repeated the defective Conservative recollection of the PM’s remarks in January.

Philp said Starmer had “smeared campaigners as jumping on, quote, ‘a far-right bandwagon’”. (The prime minister’s comments in January were directed at “politicians”).

The shadow home secretary added: “Standing up for rape victims is not far-right. So will the deputy prime minister apologise for what the prime minister said?”

Rayner leapt to the PM’s defence. Keir Starmer “did not just raise issues but acted on them”, she said, “he brought the first prosecutions against grooming gangs, called for action to address ethnicity issues in 2012 and [Philp] will know that the data the previous government collected was inaccurate and not complete.”

On the PM’s remarks in January, Rayner added: “The prime minister made those comments specifically about Tory ministers who sat for years in the government and did absolutely nothing about this scandal.”

For his third question, Philp noted that asylum seekers had been identified as some of the perpetrators in the grooming gangs scandal. And so he turned to another area of his home affairs brief and asked the deputy prime minister if she “now accepts that the small boats crisis is a crisis of public safety as well as a border crisis.”

Rayner responded that Philp, a former policing minister, “was the man at the heart of the Home Office when immigration soared” — adding that it was the Conservative Party that “lost control of our borders” and spent “£700 million of taxpayers money on persuading just four volunteers to be removed to Rwanda”.

Philp, contrary to Rayner’s insinuation, is not ashamed of the Rwanda deportation scheme. He cited the scheme repeatedly across his latter four questions as evidence that the Conservative Party had a plan for thwarting Channel crossings. The stance collides directly with a whole host of Labour attack lines, which Rayner dutifully voiced.

For years now, the Rwanda scheme has been seized upon by Labour spinners and spokespeople as a symbol of Conservative maladministration. The plan still operates as a proxy for attacks on the last government as incompetent and profligate.

Philp’s attachment to it sparks a series of political arguments that the Conservatives will not win. The Conservative Party’s confidence in the Rwanda scheme was, of course, belied by Sunak’s decision to call a summer election.

Indeed, after Rayner rubbished the Rwanda plan as ineffective, Philp was plain that the “scheme never started”. The Labour benches appeared especially bemused by that take. Rachel Reeves literally waved away the shadow home secretary’s contention.

Labour’s objections, heckled from sedentary positions, prompted the speaker to intervene. Philp was forced to repeat himself: “The Rwanda scheme never started.”

A party recently subjected to the toil of opposition tends to spend the first year of the new parliament downplaying and distancing itself from exposed aspects of its record. The shadow home secretary’s repeat references to the Rwanda scheme take the Conservatives in the wrong direction.

Rayner and Philp spent the final phase of their exchange trading idioms and pre-packaged soundbites. The shadow home secretary accused the deputy PM of possessing a “brass neck” and “a cheek”. Rayner said “£1 million a day [had been] spiffed up the wall” by the last administration “because they were so incompetent”. The government, she insisted, would take no lectures from the “Johnny-come-lately who couldn’t do anything when he was in office.”

Strutting and fretting, Philp’s sound and fury signified little of substance; but nor, in fairness, did Rayner’s answers. The unenlightening session will mean the shadow home secretary’s moment in the spotlight will be quickly forgotten.

Philp succeeded in failing to upstage his leader. But the questionable choreography does make you wonder if Badenoch would be better served by a fixed deputy.

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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Indeed, Badenoch did not perform her usual magic trick, which sees her transform a beleaguered premier into a bona fide elder statesman across six questions in just fifteen minutes. Rather, Keir Starmer — for whom the House of Commons has been a safe space — struggled. 

The prime minister relied on a series of non sequitur retorts to bail him out of difficult positions.

Badenoch started, as she often does, by pursuing the line of inquiry she should have adopted last time around. The difference this time, however, was that Starmer still does not have a solid answer on the topic of winter fuel payments. 

The Conservative leader queried: “On behalf of the pensioners who want to know, can the PM be clear with us here and now: How many of the 10 million people who lost their winter fuel payments will get it back?”

Starmer is always the first to point out when Badenoch is late to the party. This afternoon was no different. “I’m glad to hear she’s catching up with what happened two weeks ago”, the prime minister pronounced breezily. (“What happened” being code for a fiasco of a U-turn, of course).

But Starmer’s confident prologue was soon belied by his lack of material. He said Labour had taken the “right decision” on scrapping winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners last year. He pointed to an improving economic picture. That, he said, now allowed for a change of policy.

Speaking in Rochdale this morning, Rachel Reeves went further than the prime minister in confirming reports that the threshold for the payments will be raised before the winter. In an interview on Monday, Starmer merely conceded that the “sooner we have clarity… the better”. That comment was taken to mean additional details will come at the spending review next week.

Such ambiguity is ripe for exploitation at PMQs — and Badenoch capitalised.

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Another common critique of the Conservative leader is that she rarely takes “yes” for an answer. Badenoch has been known to reiterate some stale point across multiple questions, believing she has Starmer cornered, only to invite a scathing counter: “Her script doesn’t allow her to listen to the answer!”

But this time Starmer was genuinely stuck. Badenoch sensed blood. 

She asked the prime minister to apologise for the winter fuel cut. It was a strong tactic. The government’s position, that the winter fuel cut was “right” last year but wrong this year because of variant fiscal circumstances, certainly warrants scrutiny. Westminster knows the truth: the economic position has hardly altered — what changed was the burgeoning and multi-layered political backlash.

Starmer could only repeat his previous response: “We took the right decisions at the budget because we needed to stabilise the economy. She needs to apologise for the fact that they left the economy in a terrible state.”

Since November, Badenoch has routinely declined opportunities to pit the prime minister against his backbenchers, referring excessively to her own politics and positions. The Conservative leader’s takes, despite her high opinion of them, are not nearly as interesting as intra-party drama; and Badenoch belatedly recognised that with her questioning today. 

One cause for discord between No 10 and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is the government’s child poverty strategy. Badenoch labelled this “another area of confusion”, and so she sought clarification: “Can we get a simple answer? Will the government keep the two-child benefit cap?”

Starmer’s eyes fell to his folder as he regurgitated a line we have heard repeatedly in recent months. The prime minister insisted he is “determined to drive down child poverty”, but he deferred to the relevant taskforce. That, he reminded the House, will report “in due course”.

Like the winter fuel U-turn, Starmer is not in a position to give details on either timing or substance. More ambiguity for opposition parties to exploit. 

Badenoch’s pivot then, from winter fuel to child poverty, was not nearly as maladroit as those that have defined her worst showings as Conservative leader.

The Tory leader’s next question was even more effective. She declared her support for the two-child benefit cap, stating: “I believe in family, but I also believe in fairness. On this side of the House, we believe that people on benefits should have to make the same choices on having children as everyone else.”

She asked, simply, if the prime minister agreed with that position. 

Starmer did not supply a direct answer. “I believe profoundly in driving down poverty and child poverty, that’s why we’ll put a strategy in place”, he responded.

With the pressure building, Starmer changed the subject. “She talks about head spinning, [Badenoch had used the phrase two questions ago]… there’s only one leader who’s been praised this week by the Russian embassy, and if she carries on echoing Kremlin talking points like this, Reform are going to be sending her an application form for membership.”

In another context, it would have been a worthy attack line. But not in response to a question on child poverty. “What on Earth was that?”, asked a sedentary Chris Philp. A mood of bemusement fell over the House. The confused-sounding noises emanating from the Conservative benches soon drowned out any Labour jeers. 

Badenoch’s response, in my estimation, was her best contribution to commons discourse since her elevation as leader: “I asked him what he believed in, he had to look in his folder to find the answer.”

But Starmer doubled down: “I am going to look in my folder because here I’ve got the quote that she had on Sky News… what she said was this: ‘Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the United Kingdom, just like Ukraine is on behalf of western Europe against Russia.’”

The prime minister added: “[The Russian embassy] put out a statement saying the leader of the opposition has finally called a spade a spade, Ukraine is indeed fighting a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Western interests…

“She asks me what I believe in — I believe in standing by Ukraine and calling out Russia as the aggressor.”

Again, on another day, in response to another topic, the attack could well have worked. But at PMQs the segue is just as, if not more important, than the scripted attack line. Starmer had only done half a job — and the easy bit at that. 

Badenoch was brusque in response: “It was our [Tory] government that stood behind Ukraine and led the way in Europe.

“Everything he has said this afternoon is total nonsense — obfuscation, avoiding the question, he doesn’t have any answers. It’s disgraceful.”

But it wasn’t just Badenoch who failed to get a straight answer out of the prime minister. Brendan O’Hara, an SNP MP, asked Starmer if he would stand by the position taken by government lawyers that “no genocide has occurred or is occurring” in Gaza.

The prime minister said he was “appalled by Israel’s recent actions… we must see a ceasefire, hostages must be released and there must be aid into Gaza”.

He added: “But he talks about peace and security. Their party [the SNP] at this moment of global instability… they want to get rid of the nuclear deterrent, the single most important capability that we have to keep the UK safe.”

Starmer will know that voters in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse are heading to the polls tomorrow for a Scottish parliament by-election. But this was not the moment to launch into a political attack. His MPs recognised this. They weren’t with him. 

Reform MP Sarah Pochin was granted her first PMQ today. The House’s newest MP, returned at the recent Runcorn and Helsby by-election, called on the government to ban the burqa “in the interests of safety”.

Her question was greeted by a resounding “hear, hear!” from the Reform bench — and cries of “disgrace” from just about everywhere else. 

Pochin asked: “Given the prime minister’s desire to strengthen strategic alignment with our European neighbours, will he in the interests of public safety follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and others and ban the burka?”

As the House crackled with criticism, Starmer welcomed Pochin “to her place”. He chose not to “follow her down that line”. 

Instead, he commented: “Now she is here and safely in her place perhaps she could tell her new party leader [Nigel Farage] that his latest plan to bet £80 billion of unfunded tax cuts, no idea how he is going to pay for it, is Liz Truss all over again.

“Although considering I think she was a Conservative member when Liz Truss was leader she probably won’t.”

The prime minister, wisely, opted against instigating a national debate on the burqa. But Starmer’s obviously rehearsed retort will only reinforce criticism that he struggles for straight answers. A better response would have been to urge Pochin to focus on her new constituents’ priorities. (I wonder how many times the burqa came up on the doorstep during her successful by-election campaign).

PMQs today was the first session in some time that was not graced by a planted question, courtesy of a loyal Labour MP and some scheming whip. Starmer’s slippery answers would suggest he has become rather used to sycophantic softballs. Certainly, either the prime minister’s folder needs updating — or Starmer needs some lessons in quick thinking. 

Whatever the case, the PM’s evasive manoeuvres today — while reflecting a deeper malaise in some instances (winter fuel and child poverty) — will do him no favours. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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The winter fuel payment cut, and the surrounding row, has provided one of the defining narratives of this Labour government. The cut was announced on 30 July, the eve of parliament’s long summer recess, by chancellor Rachel Reeves. She insisted the move would save the exchequer around £1.5 billion.

But in pure political terms, the cut has proved immensely costly. The damage it has wreaked was evidenced — profoundly, unmistakably — at the local elections last month. That followed research from More in Common that showed the policy was simultaneously the most widely understood by the electorate, and the most vehemently despised. 

Starmer has now sought to atone for his government’s “original sin”. The question that follows is whether the act of U-turning — with all the implications it has for the government’s authority across wider policy rows — proves more costly than the now-hypothetical act of retaining the measure. Those cabinet ministers and Labour backbenchers who expressed concerns about the cut from the start (either privately or publicly) will feel emboldened. Some may now see the government’s controversial welfare cuts as fair game. 

But not acting, Downing Street has concluded, posed the greatest risk of all. Whatever the broader political ramifications, voters had cast their verdict on the poisonous policy, leaving Starmer little choice but to reach for an antidote. He will have to deal with the side effects in time. 

The PM’s statement today came in response to a likely planted question from Labour backbencher Sarah Owen. Owen, who has criticised the government from the “soft left” over its immigration rhetoric and welfare policy, asked Starmer what measures he could take to help “struggling pensioners” through the cost-of-living crisis. 

The PM’s response is worth quoting in full: “I recognise that people are still feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis including pensioners and as the economy improves we want to make sure people feel those improvements in their days as their lives go forward and that is why we want to ensure that as we go forward more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments.

“As you would expect, we will only make decisions we will afford. That is why we will look at that as part of a fiscal event.”

Those remarks drew a knowing “Ah!” from the opposition benches. The murmuring only quietened once Kemi Badenoch was called by the speaker. 

“It was extraordinary listening to that last answer from the prime minister”, the Conservative leader began. She went on to address the new inflation figures (the consumer prices index rose to 3.5 per cent in April), before turning to reports of cabinet division. A memo from Angela Rayner’s department, urging the chancellor to raise taxes by £3 billion to £4 billion a year ahead of the spring statement, was published this morning by the Daily Telegraph. Badenoch knows a thing or two about frontbench insubordination; she described Rayner as “on manoeuvres”.

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Only then, four questions in, did the Tory leader reference the winter fuel payment. “We heard his earlier answer on winter fuel”, Badenoch said, “let’s try and get some more information”. 

The problem was that the Conservative leader’s scripted intervention did not seek further information. Badenoch wanted a “yes or no” response to a question Starmer had, in effect, already answered: “Is he planning to U-turn on winter fuel cuts?”

Starmer commented: “I made clear in my earlier answer that as the economy improves, we want to take measures that will impact on people’s lives and therefore we will look at the threshold. But that will have to be part of a fiscal event.”

But Badenoch was not satisfied. She hit back: “I made it really easy for the prime minister, just a simple question, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and he could not answer. I wonder how the public feel about a man who cannot give a straight answer to a straight question.”

It is not the first time Badenoch hasn’t been able to take yes for an answer at PMQs. In a session earlier this year, Starmer lampooned the opposition leader and her script that “doesn’t allow her to listen to the answer”. 

Today’s exchange is just the latest example of Badenoch proving either unwilling or unable to think on her feet. Once more, the Conservative leader was stifled by her own script.

Interestingly, this now well-established precedent has created a compelling incentive for the PM to try and wrong-foot Badenoch, as he did today. 

It’s telling that Starmer is willing to announce a major U-turn mere seconds before the individual in theory best-placed to benefit is due to scrutinise him. Paradoxically but explicably, prime minister’s questions has become a forum for Starmer to brief out potentially embarrassing news stories — so little faith does he have in the Conservative leader to capitalise across her six questions. 

Tory MPs understandably looked rather queasy once Badenoch returned to her place on the opposition frontbench. The Conservative leader’s inability to deviate from the rigid strictures set out by her script is seeing opportunity after opportunity squandered on the floor of the commons. 

Conservative MPs were then forced to listen to Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, go out of his way to ask a specific question on the winter fuel U-turn. In his contribution, Davey urged Starmer to reverse the cut “in full”.

The prime minister responded: “As [the economy] improves, I do want people to feel the benefit of the measures that we are taking, and that is why I want to ensure that more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel.”

It took mere minutes for the Lib Dems to capitalise with a press release ridiculing the “world’s longest U-turn”. CCHQ, meanwhile, spent the best part of two hours pulling together a quote from Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary. 

It’s further proof of what we have known for some time: all is not well in the Conservative Party.

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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For one, Badenoch has made dodging the news agenda a regular feature of her session strategy. Opposition leaders, especially those early in their tenure, have historically exploited PMQs for its headline-making potential. It’s an opportunity to secure a series of on-the-record responses from the prime minister to some salient, uncomfortable issue. This is the process by which an opposition leader can build credibility, and slowly erode the government’s own. But not Badenoch.

Secondly, there is the fundamental but outstanding question as to the Conservative Party’s very relevance. According to recent polling, Badenoch’s party has settled into a consistent third place — behind Labour and Reform UK. Keir Starmer and his health secretary, Wes Streeting, have both stated explicitly in recent days that they view Reform as Labour’s principal opponent. In these terms, Badenoch’s questioning serves merely as a forum for Starmer to advance his criticisms of Nigel Farage, or as a warm-up when the Reform chief’s name is on the order paper (as was the case today).

This afternoon, Badenoch took Starmer to task for Labour’s economic record, with a particular focus on unemployment. Across her six questions, the Conservative leader sought a commitment from the prime minister that unemployment would be lower in a year’s time; she cited the struggles of a department store which is having a “Rachel Reeves closing down sale”; and rubbished Labour’s employment rights bill as “deeply damaging to growth.”

The Conservative leader maintained a clear and conspicuous distance from the issue of the day: immigration. The end result was another performance that will fail to trouble Westminster’s headline-writers.

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But Badenoch’s silence is explicable. The Conservative Party is caught in a crippling catch-22 on migration — one never more discernible than when Badenoch appears at the despatch box. 

The Tory leader must choose: major on migration and find her party’s recent record in government regurgitated back, together with a series of unsparing attack lines. Or refuse to engage in the debate, and ensure her party’s reputation remains of its original nature.  

In other words, Badenoch cannot detoxify the Conservative Party’s reputation on migration without mentioning it. And she cannot mention migration without Reform and Labour referring to her party’s toxic reputation. 

Moreover, when immigration is unmistakably, indisputably the issue of the day, any choice to side-step it is necessarily a conscious one — a point that can itself be weaponised at Badenoch’s expense. By ignoring the topic, Badenoch is in effect admitting the Conservatives have nothing useful to say.

This dynamic speaks to the dismal state the Conservative Party finds itself in: political zugzwang, where any move by the leader inevitably lessens the Tories’ standing.

The observation is under-covered: Badenoch does not dodge the news agenda because she misunderstands it — she does so because she is, after all, well aware of her party’s manifold weaknesses. And yet, the act of ignoring the day’s defining issue is simultaneously one of profound weakness.

Keir Starmer, for all his present woes, does not find himself in such a sorry position. The frontbench exchange flatters Labour. The Conservative leader’s contributions conceal, rather than reveal, the prime minister’s problems. Starmer wins, in effect, by default.

All this said, there is still plenty of room for Badenoch to make in-the-moment mistakes, errors on which Starmer can capitalise. Today, the prime minister spent the session goading Badenoch into criticising the government’s recent trade successes. Whatever question was put, Starmer would extol the virtues of the UK-US and UK-India trade agreements. 

Badenoch took the bait. The Conservative leader ridiculed the PM’s “tiny tariff deal” with the US which, she said, has put the UK in a “worse position than in March”.

The aside provided Starmer with just enough material to launch into a scripted comeback. The prime minister, voice bellowing, called on Badenoch to “get the train to Solihull” and speak to workers at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR); there, the Tory leader could tell them that she “would rip up the deal that protects their jobs”.

Then, Starmer continued, Badenoch should “travel across” to Scunthorpe and tell the town’s steel workers she would “rip up the deal that saves their jobs”.

The PM added: “And if she’s got time, go up to Scotland and talk to the whisky distilleries and tell them she’d rip up the deal that’s creating 1,200 jobs for them… and then come back here next week, and tell us what reaction she got”.

Starmer, for what it is worth, also came armed with some well-judged attack lines. At one point, he said the Conservatives were collectively succumbing “to a kind of brain rot”. 

He concluded: “A once great political party is sliding into brain-dead oblivion.”

The statements were successive hammer blows, when a mere gust of wind was required. Badenoch, politically flimsy and exposed, came toppling down. 

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Today’s session of PMQs proves that Starmer and Streeting are correct in their aforementioned assessment. In every sense — electoral, political and parliamentary — it is Reform UK that poses Labour the greatest challenge. 

It is telling of Reform UK’s relative strength, that when Farage took to his feet this afternoon, no observer was in any doubt as to the substance of his question. True to form, the Reform leader urged Starmer to declare a “national security emergency” to combat small boat Channel crossings.  

Farage began: “We at Reform, a party that is alive and kicking, very much enjoyed your speech on Monday. You seem to be learning a very great deal from us.

“But can I encourage you to please go further…. Since the speech on Monday, 1,000 young undocumented young males have crossed the English Channel.”

Starmer responded that the “situation is serious” and turned his fire on the Conservative Party”. The last government, he said, “lost control of the borders.”

The prime minister added: “We are taking powers. The borders bill, precisely to his point, is the first bill to give terrorism like powers to law enforcement, precisely so that we can get in before the crimes are committed, before people get to this country.

“This is the most far-reaching provision ever for law enforcement to defend and secure our borders. That is why it is extraordinary that he, of all people, voted against it.”

The exchange itself did not advance the debate on immigration, in either policy or rhetorical terms. But Farage’s quip that he “very much enjoyed” Starmer’s speech on Monday will exacerbate the unease that grips Labour.

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch cannot escape the Conservative catch-22 appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Collectively, Badenoch and Starmer speak for 39 per cent of the public. That is the principal finding of the latest YouGov/Sky News poll. Labour is placed second on 22 per cent and the Conservatives on 17 per cent; for the latter, as Reform UK rides high on 29 per cent, that is terminal territory.

The Conservative Party last polled at 17 per cent in June 2019, just before Theresa May was ousted as prime minister.

In the commons chamber, Badenoch’s six questions damn her: they are a reminder of the Conservative Party’s enduring institutional relevance, and simultaneously of her inability to cut through at Westminster — let alone with the electorate beyond. Even after the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, Badenoch begs more questions of the PM on a weekly basis than Reform has MPs. 

The Conservative leader’s PMQs performances sum up the party’s malaise. The Tories go through the motions of mattering: spokespeople tour the media studios, press releases are pinged into inboxes, government ministers are scrutinised on the floor of the commons. But the Conservative Party’s ostensible busyness belies it. The political energy is elsewhere. 

This position is made worse by the fact that Badenoch, every so often, shows signs of pressuring the prime minister. Taking to the despatch box this afternoon, the Conservative leader successfully chose the topic that is most likely to highlight Labour divisions: the winter fuel payment cut. 

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Her first question was well-composed: “Does the prime minister now admit that he was wrong to remove the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners?”

Badenoch rightly judged that her attack did not need additional context. Labour’s local elections drubbing and the fallout since has heightened focus on Starmer’s “original sin”. Backbenchers of all factional stripes — Blue Labour, Socialist Campaign Group, the “soft left” — have pointed to the winter fuel payment as an electorally toxic policy.

The prime minister responded: “The number one job of this government was to put our finances back in order after the last government lost control and to deal with the £22 billion black hole that they left.

“Because of our action we have stabilised the economy, we have invested record amounts in the NHS… and of course we are committed to the triple lock which improved pensions by £470 last year.”

It is not the line many of Starmer’s backbenchers want him to take. The clamour for a symbolic U-turn on the winter fuel payment is growing louder. The Red Wall caucus of Labour MPs this morning issued a statement suggesting an about-face could, contrary to No 10’s apparent calculation, see Labour assume a “position of strength”.

Badenoch continued along the right lines: “His mayor in Doncaster [Ros Jones] says it’s wrong, his first minister in Wales [Eluned Morgan] says it’s wrong, even his own MPs are saying it’s wrong.”

But no sooner had Badenoch delivered her best line of the session — “Pensioners are poorer and colder because of his decisions” — than she changed course. 

Rather than drill down on Labour criticism of the winter fuel cut — forcing Starmer to deliver on-the-record defences of this uniquely unpopular policy, Badenoch turned to net zero. It was a screeching pivot.

First, the Conservative leader accused Starmer of reneging on a Labour manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills. The prime minister predicted Badenoch’s line of inquiry. “The way to bring energy bills down for good is to deliver cheap, clean, home-grown energy”, Starmer responded. 

Later in the exchange, the prime minister revealed his preparation. He commented: “I’ve got the shadow chancellor [Mel Stride] here, his previous words: ‘Net zero — the shift must happen now as a matter of urgency’. His words. ‘It’s no longer an environmental issue. Energy independence should be reviewed as part of our national security.’ He must have our lines.

“What about the leader of the opposition herself? She said: ‘We believe that green trade and investment will be the future-proofing force that will help us create a better tomorrow.’ And then she went on to say this. ‘It’s long term investment in nuclear and renewables that will reduce our dependencies on fossil fuels and keep down consumer [costs]’.

“She’s got a reputation, apparently, for straight talking. She was right, though, wasn’t she?”

It was an effective and symbolic put-down. The prime minister, despite speculation to the contrary, shows no sign of abandoning on his government’s net zero platform.

“Net zero is an opportunity to be seized”, he insisted on one occasion. He later accused Badenoch of being a “climate defeatist” and dismissed the Conservative position as “anti-growth, anti-jobs and anti-working people.”

Badenoch closed by accusing the PM of travelling “further and faster in the wrong direction”. She noted Tony Blair’s recent comments on net zero — which sent Westminster into a frenzy last week. 

Intriguingly, Badenoch’s questioning often comes across as a conscious response to criticism levelled at her most recent performance. Ahead of the local elections last week, Westminster widely expected the Conservative leader to weaponise Blair’s apparent attack on net zero. The primary reason the former PM’s comments were notable was that they played into Conservative attack lines. And yet Badenoch ignored them.

There is something uniquely baffling about a decision-making process — pursued as part of Badenoch’s PMQs preparation — that ignores Blair’s remarks when they were relevant, but seizes on them when the moment has passed. 

Badenoch has been offered a great deal of PMQs advice in her six months as leader. Last month, she disclosed the details of discussions with David Cameron, once a doughty PMQs performer, and Iain Duncan Smith, once a, well, PMQs performer. 

Cameron and IDS’ advice, Badenoch relayed to Times Radio, made plain that the public should be able to “follow” the opposition chief’s argument. Ground-breaking stuff. Overtime, by making reasonable and consistent criticisms of the government, a leader can build credibility. 

Across separate topics, Badenoch failed on these counts this afternoon. Viewed together, her recurrent lacklustre performances are beginning to exact a political toll.

The prevailing discourse suggests Badenoch, already, is on borrowed time. Every PMQs session is styled as a fightback. And every week Starmer appears exposed. But Badenoch’s performances never fail to fall short of Westminster’s steadily deteriorating expectations. Sometimes there is a sign of a breakthrough. It is soon squandered. She pursues a meandering line of inquiry. An open goal is missed. The prime minister emerges relatively unscathed — even strengthened. 

Politicos are left scratching their heads. 

All the while, the pressure builds. Farage chortles. Jenrick manoeuvres. It is an escalating doom spiral that Badenoch shows no sign of stemming — let alone reversing.

Strong performances at PMQs are not, in and of themselves, a vote winner. But on a week-by-week basis, they are a means by which an opposition leader can manage their party. Combative showings will keep backbenchers on side, even when the party is travelling backwards by other measures.

Badenoch’s poor performance this week comes at an especially inopportune moment. In the wake of the local elections, Conservative doubts as to their leader’s ability will now harden. Expect the party’s quiet panic, still playing out in the background via anonymous briefings, to intensify. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch spurns opportunity to damage Starmer (again) appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

In her final commons tussle with the prime minister before the local elections on Thursday, Badenoch began by referring to the recent comments of Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister.

“The prime minister’s safeguarding minister admitted on the floor of the House that there was a cover up of the child rape gang scandal”, the Conservative leader declared.

“Does the prime minister think we should expose this cover up?”

Responding, Keir Starmer said he oversaw the first grooming gang prosecution in his previous role as director of public prosecutions (DPP), and accused Badenoch of never raising the issue in the commons “in three years” while she was the equalities minister.

The exchange that then unfolded followed a familiar pattern: Badenoch blasted Starmer for refusing to acquiesce to Conservative demands for an inquiry — weaving in some unsubtle suggestions Labour is complicit in a wider “cover up”. Starmer scolded Badenoch for her record in government and alleged lack of action on the issue. He referred repeatedly to his tenure as DPP. So did Badenoch; she seemed less impressed. 

Both Starmer and Badenoch’s closing lines reflect how little ground was covered in the full six-question, six-answer session. Tying in the local elections, the Tory leader concluded: “Isn’t the choice tomorrow between chaos and cover-ups under Labour councils or better services under the Conservatives?”

Starmer’s response was, by the standards of his pre-scripted PMQs perorations, pretty meek. He noted: “Tomorrow is the first opportunity the country has to pass their verdict on the Leader of the Opposition and the party opposite after the general election… we will see her next week.”

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With Westminster all a quiver today after Tony Blair’s net zero intervention, Badenoch’s decision to foreground the grooming scandal— as her final local elections pitch — is already facing some scrutiny. 

Blair’s comments are politically notable because they play into Reform and Tory attack lines on the government’s climate strategy. The Conservative Party appeared to show some cognisance of this fact yesterday, when central office put a press release together welcoming the intervention. 

In a gleeful press notice, acting shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie ridiculed “Ed Miliband’s net zero zealotry” and urged Starmer to follow the Conservative interpretation of Blair’s advice. Ditch the “ideological dogma”, Bowie demanded of the government.  

The timing of Blair’s intervention is perplexing and potentially damaging. Badenoch, of course, has been a vocal critic of the government’s net zero drive: as a minister, as a leadership candidate, and as Conservative leader. 

But Badenoch did not direct her attention to Labour’s most obvious bruise today. 

The perplexing nature of Blair’s intervention is only rivalled by Badenoch’s decision to ignore it this afternoon. 

For what it is worth, Badenoch was strong on the substance of her questioning. But she has had plenty of practice, having scrutinised Starmer on these exact points — using the same framing — on several occasions since January. For the same reason, the prime minister’s comebacks were at least passable.

When the Tory party suffers significant losses in the local elections tomorrow, it will not be because of Badenoch’s performance today. But for those Conservatives whose patience Badenoch is testing, this latest spurned opportunity to highlight Labour’s woes — on the eve of an electoral cataclysm — will be noted as such. 

It was left to Sammy Wilson, the DUP chief whip, to ask Starmer about Blair’s climate broadside. Predictably, the prime minister’s response has won headlines as the latest natural development in this untimely Labour Party debate. 

Ed Davey used his questions to probe the prime minister on two topics the Lib Dems have emphasised repeatedly this parliament: Donald Trump and mental health. For some readers, these topics could well be linked — but for Davey they represent distinct lines of attack. 

The Liberal Democrat leader secured a pointed non-denial from Starmer on the question of whether parliament will be granted a vote on any US-UK trade deal. That secures headlines today and additional lines of inquiry for future sessions. This is the process whereby leaders build credibility at PMQs. The Conservative Party should take notes. 

Nigel Farage caught the speaker’s eye today. The Reform leader is outnumbered in the commons; but that means his fishing for a social media soundbite is usually successful.

The Reform UK leader asked: “Is it not time to admit that ‘smash the gangs’ was nothing more than an election slogan, not a policy? And isn’t it time to declare a national emergency and to act accordingly?”

Starmer’s response was scattergun: a simultaneous, all-encompassing exposition of the Labour’s Reform criticisms. In a cacophony of rhetoric, the prime minister commented: “Did they support those extra measures to actually smash the gangs? No, they went in the lobby with this lot [the Conservatives] in their new coalition to vote against them.

“And let’s be clear what a vote for his party means. It’s a vote to charge for the NHS. It means a pro-Putin foreign policy. And a vote against workers’ rights.

“And now we hear Mr Speaker, he’s recruited Liz Truss as his new top adviser.”

Starmer closed by referencing Farage’s support for the former prime minister’s mini-budget. That, of the six tactics the prime minister deployed in this single answer, was by far the most convincing and potent. Perhaps he should focus on augmenting this argument in the time it takes Farage to return to the commons chamber.   

Roll on the local elections. 

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch perplexes in pre-election showing appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

It was reported earlier this month that Lord Cameron, who was known to enjoy the adversarial exchanges at PMQs from 2005-2016, had worked with Badenoch to help her approach the Wednesday commons sessions.

Asked to reveal the coaching points offered to her by the former prime minister, Badenoch said Cameron “helped me once a few months ago.”

She went on to defend her approach to PMQs and rubbished the advice offered to her by individuals who have never “done it”.

Badenoch told Times Radio: “A lot of people give me advice about prime minister’s questions — none of them have ever done it. 

“The best advice came from the two people [former Tory leaders Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Cameron] who did it, and what they said was that it’s not about winning the session. 

“Lots of people will encourage you to do things just to win in the moment, but it is about long-term credibility, and that’s one of the things that I think is actually very important.”

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Referring to Cameron’s advice, Badenoch commented: “He said that I was very analytical and went into a lot of detail, but most people wouldn’t understand or wouldn’t be able to follow it, so I sort of changed a little bit of that approach. So it was very good advice. 

“And Iain Duncan Smith also gave excellent advice as well. He said it was also about people being able to follow the argument which is quite interesting. 

“But again, they’re the ones who’ve done it before. I often get loads of suggestions, most of which are terrible.”

She added: “[I have been told] to be more abusive, call [Keir Starmer] a liar on the floor of the House. That’s what people want to hear. All sorts of stuff that’s actually quite silly.”

Badenoch went on to suggest that the prime minister refers to her in a “patronising” tone at PMQs.

Asked about Starmer’s approach, the Conservative leader said: “I have a really thick skin. I think that that’s what he feels he needs to do. 

“If being patronising was something that bothered me, I wouldn’t be leader of the opposition today. But I think it is very obvious that he is somebody who thinks that he shouldn’t be questioned. 

“It looks like he’s being tortured at PMQs — he doesn’t answer questions. 

“I mean, say what you liked about Rishi Sunak, but he always had an answer. I see a man who doesn’t really have answers, and so he tries to get away from that by just being disparaging about the person across the despatch box. And so I’m now responding in kind.”

Last week’s session of PMQs was dominated by the supreme court’s ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

Badenoch repeatedly referenced the prime minister’s previous comments on the debate and, in a personal back-and-forth, called out the treatment of former Labour MP Rosie Duffield.

Duffield, now an independent MP, left Labour last year after recurrent battles with the party leadership. 

Badenoch said: “The thing I thought was really bad last week, was the way he treated Rosie Duffield. At least I can speak at the despatch box. I can fend for myself — she didn’t have a voice. She wasn’t called by the speaker, and so I made sure that I defended her after she’d been hounded out of her party.”

The Tory leader added: “He didn’t even acknowledge her existence or her presence. I think that was awful.”

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The post Kemi Badenoch reveals PMQs advice offered by David Cameron appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Since her elevation as leader in November 2024, ConservativeHome has tracked in real-time how far — and how quickly — Badenoch’s fortunes have fallen among the Tory grassroots. In the Conservative bible’s latest league table, she ranks as a middling shadow minister — featuring just below Nigel Huddleston, the party chair, and 0.1 points above Jesse Norman, the shadow commons leader.

The activists, in short, have lost sight of the qualities they once associated with Badenoch, a former grassroots darling. Her eminence in these league tables was once an inarguable fact of Tory life. Today’s session of prime minister’s questions, therefore, was a chance for Badenoch to restore the Conservative Party’s dwindling faith in its leader by returning to her specialist subject: gender politics.

Badenoch, one of Westminster’s most vocal campaigners for single-sex spaces, was greeted with a raucous cheer from her backbenchers as she gripped the despatch box. The wall of noise was effusive — but expectant. The Conservative leader responded by dedicating her six allotted questions to the supreme court’s landmark ruling last week.

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The debate presents a politically appealing dichotomy: Badenoch can re-emphasise her standing as a combative, conviction politician — while problematising Keir Starmer’s belated acquiescence to the supreme court’s position, after years of slippery U-turns.

The result was the spikiest confrontation yet between the prime minister and his opposition counterpart.

Badenoch began, as has become standard practice, with a short question: “Does the prime minister now accept that when he said it was the law that trans women were women, he was wrong?”

Starmer responded that the government will support and implement the supreme court ruling and “continue to protect single-sex spaces based on biological sex”.

“Let me be clear”, he began. “I welcome the Supreme Court ruling on this issue. It brings clarity and it will give confidence to women and of course to service providers.”

But he added, in a challenge to Badenoch: “We will also ensure that trans people are treated with respect and we will ensure that everybody is given dignity in their everyday lives.

“I do think this is the time now to lower the temperature, to move forward and to conduct this debate with the care and compassion that it deserves. And I think that should unite the whole house.”

Hitting back, the Conservative leader called on Starmer to apologise to Rosie Duffield, the now independent MP who left Labour last year after recurrent battles with the party leadership. Badenoch said the PM had “hounded” his onetime colleague out of the party for “simply for telling the truth.”

Duffield, who was present in the chamber this afternoon, looked distinctly unimpressed as Starmer returned to the despatch box. He repeated his call for “dignity and respect” and warned against turning the supreme court ruling into a “political football”.

He referenced an exchange between himself and Rishi Sunak last year, in which the then-PM quipped that Starmer had made “99 per cent” of a U-turn over the issue of gender self-identification. The infamous line invoked the Labour leader’s comment that 99.9 per cent of women “of course haven’t got a penis”, which he delivered in an oft-quoted interview with LBC in 2023.

Starmer remarked today: “When we make this a political football… we end up with the spectacle of a decent man — and he was a decent man, the previous prime minister — diminishing himself at this despatch box making trans jokes whilst the mother of a murdered trans teenager [Brianna Ghey] watched from the public gallery…

“And I believe there is a consensus in this House and the country [in favour of] that approach.”

Badenoch responded by restating her support for Duffield — who has been linked with defecting to the Conservatives since leaving Labour. “There was no apology for the member for Canterbury, there was no taking of responsibility. He talks of political football, he practically kicked her out of his party”, she said.

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The Conservative leader went on to accuse Starmer of hiding after the supreme court ruling. “Why did it take him so long to respond? Isn’t it because he was scared?”

Starmer sensed a moment to seize the advantage and referred back to Badenoch’s appearance in the commons yesterday. Then, responding to equalities minister Bridget Phillipson, the Conservative leader rubbished the government’s position as “fiction”.

“The only fiction here is the idea that she delivered anything in office”, Starmer declared.

He pursued an effective line of attack that led MPs on a guided tour of Badenoch’s ministerial career. “She did precisely nothing” while women and equalities minister for two years, Starmer began. “She provided no clarity on the law, nothing to improve women’s lives which got materially worse under her watch…

“There’s a pattern of behaviour here. Women and equalities minister — failed to do anything for women. The trade minister who failed to get a trade deal with the US. The business minister who failed to get a deal for British steel.

“She’s a spectator, not a leader.”

It is striking the extent to which the news agenda overlaps with Badenoch’s ministerial experience. The resultant picture does not reflect all that positively on the now-Conservative leader.

This point, addressed by Starmer this afternoon, means the Conservative leader is always at risk of overplaying her hand at PMQs. The prime minister has fourteen years of Conservative government — of which Badenoch was a starring member — to refer to. Her ministerial lapses are uniquely salient.

The session’s second phase highlighted a further area in which Badenoch is exposed: the irrepressible activism of her shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick.

Returning to the despatch box, Badenoch cited leaked criticisms of last week’s supreme court ruling in a Labour WhatsApp group chat. Starmer responded that there is only one WhatsApp group Badenoch should worry about — “the one of her shadow justice secretary.”

Jenrick, whose immovable prominence is emerging as a major political problem for Badenoch, mistakenly added hundreds of Westminster insiders to a WhatsApp group last week.

Starmer pivoted to Jenrick’s comments, reported this morning, that indicate the shadow justice secretary’s support for a Reform-Conservative “coalition”.

“The mask has just slipped, just one week before the local elections”, the prime minister declared.

“The shadow justice secretary, who is not here — a man who is doing everything he can to replace her, a man who most of them [Tory MPs] want as a leader of their party, has admitted that Reform and the Tories are working together.”

He quipped that there is a “coalition between Reform and the Tories being formed behind [Badenoch’s] back”, adding that “in six short months she’s lost control of her party.”

Badenoch returned: “Who is playing political football now?”

The answer, with local elections on 1 May, was of course both party leaders. Although Badenoch’s follow-up was especially telling: “He should be more worried about his backbenchers than my frontbenchers.”

The prepared line suggests LOTO is well aware of the political pressure Jenrick is applying, albeit indirectly.

Finally, in a pointed peroration, the Conservative leader attacked Starmer using familiar tropes. She accused the prime minister of “bending the knee” to every “passing fad” and rubbished his lack of “moral courage”.

Starmer, she added, “doesn’t have the balls.”

With the Conservative benches rocking, Badenoch continued: “The prime minister only tells people what they want to hear. He is a weather vane who twists in the wind — he cheered an ideology that denied safe spaces to women and girls because he thought it was cool to do so. He hounded a brave female MP out of his party for telling the truth he accepts now.”

She concluded: “And now he is hiding behind the supreme court judgement. Isn’t that because he doesn’t know what he actually believes?”

Starmer’s response was equally spiky: “I can only assume that sounded better when she did it in the mirror earlier on.”

“The truth is it doesn’t really matter what the leader of the opposition says, because nobody believes — none of them — that she’s going to lead [the Conservative Party] into the next election anyway.

“It’s going to be the shadow justice secretary — he’s away plotting, that’s why he is not here today — and the member for Clacton [Nigel Farage], fighting over the bones of the Tory party.”

He added: “The member for Clacton is going to do what he always does: eat the Tory party for breakfast.”

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It is always a reliable tactic to treat your PMQs sparring partner as a political irrelevance — especially when the accusation is credible. This is the approach Starmer deployed weekly versus Rishi Sunak, as an array of antagonistic Conservative groupings, caucuses and factions assembled behind him, knives sharpened.

Nevertheless, it’s notable just how explicit the prime minister was willing to be this afternoon. The comments are a signal that Starmer is, after all, preparing for a future in which Badenoch is deposed — and the Reform-Tory hybrid that could replace her.

Ultimately, after six pointed questions and six increasingly indignant answers, Starmer emerged looking less scathed than the Conservative Party would have liked heading into PMQs. Badenoch’s focus on her favourite subject was predictable — and Starmer arrived armed with some worthy comebacks. The emerging row over Jenrick’s “coalition” comments handed the PM additional ammunition.

Starmer’s targets were twofold: the Conservative frontbench and Reform’s parliamentary bridgehead. Nigel Farage, in his place this afternoon, looked pleased with his repeat mentions. But today, Starmer sought to toxify Reform UK and their Conservative rivals by mutual association.

Overall, one wonders whether Badenoch used her best material at the despatch box yesterday. Facing Phillipson, the Conservative leader listed off a series of historic Labour positions that Starmer would now be unwilling to defend. Badenoch’s criticisms were combative, but notably less specific, this afternoon. Her extended focus on Rosie Duffield will carry little weight beyond Westminster.

But the Conservative benches looked roused enough today — a relatively rare sight. Badenoch’s zippier performance will be chalked up as a success in CCHQ.

And yet Badenoch will have few better opportunities to scorch Starmer than this: with the news agenda (in theory) on her side and speaking to her assumed strengths. Could Labour, then, interpret Starmer’s passable performance as proof that Badenoch is all but neutralised as a political threat?

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Badenoch rejects Labour’s response to supreme court ruling as ‘shameless work of fiction’

Lunchtime soundbite

‘I think the outpouring of grief and love that we’ve seen in the last two days or so shows the respect and admiration that he was held in around the world. May his Holiness rest in peace’

—  Keir Starmer begins PMQs today by paying tribute to the late Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88.

Now try this…

‘The Tories have a need for speed issue’
Via  ConservativeHome’s Tali Fraser.

‘Britain’s hereditary lords hatch a survival plan’
The UK’s 92 birthright lawmakers are set to be removed, despite a last fight in the House of Lords — but some could be kept on as legislators for life, Politico reports.

‘Welsh Tory to quit at next Senedd poll to fight general election betting charges’
The Guardian reports.

On this day in 2024:

Polling expert sees Rwanda scheme as ‘last card’ Sunak can play against Labour

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The post PMQs verdict: In her comfort zone, Kemi Badenoch was still exposed appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The quippy stunt secured headlines for the Lib Dem leader — alongside a reasonable share of ridicule. That’s par for this particular course. But Davey’s underlying contention, that the Lib Dems can supplant the Conservatives as the “party of Middle England”, shone through. (The Lib Dems recently topped a YouGov opinion poll in the south of England after all).

Back in the House of Commons for prime minister’s questions this afternoon, Davey exchanged his equine metaphors for a more familiar hobby-horse: his anti-Donald Trump attacks.

Since November, when Trump swept up the swing states to secure a second non-consecutive presidential term, the Liberal Democrats have moved definitely towards an anti-MAGA position. Davey has ratcheted up his reproval in recent weeks, responding to developments on the Ukraine war and now Trump’s protectionist threats.

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According to reports, the White House has drafted a proposal for the US to impose wounding tariffs of about 20 per cent on most imports to the world’s largest economy. Trump is expected to announce as much in a Rose Garden address at around 9pm UK time. Britain, like every other historic US ally, is in the firing line.

Keir Starmer began PMQs today with a statement on the government’s planned response. “A trade war is in nobody’s interest”, the prime minister told MPs, “and the country deserves — and we will take — a calm, pragmatic approach.”

He added: “That’s why constructive talks are progressing to agree a wider economic prosperity deal with the US. That’s why we’re working with all industries and sectors likely to be impacted.

“Our decisions will always be guided by our national interest, and that’s why we have prepared for all eventualities and we will rule nothing out.”

Kemi Badenoch eventually turned to tariffs during the despatch box tussle this afternoon. The former trade secretary accused Starmer of failing to negotiate a trade deal with the US. But it was Davey who delivered the session’s most thoughtful contribution.

The Lib Dem leader began by praising the prime minister’s “commendable leadership” over Ukraine and his attempts to convene a military “coalition of the willing” to police any future peace deal. Davey then co-opted this term, first coined by US academics in the 1970s, to describe the action he believes the government should take in response to Trump’s tariffs.

He contended: “The prime minister has shown commendable leadership over Ukraine with his plan for a military coalition of the willing.

“Will he now provide similar leadership with an ‘economic coalition of the willing’ against Trump’s tariffs, for free trade, so he can avoid a global trade war and a global recession?”

There is a compelling logic to the position: a united response to Trump’s tariffs could galvanise political and business criticism in the United States, potentially forcing the US president’s hand. If the US president proves stubborn, the UK government could invest its efforts in building the economic relationship between those parties similarly affected by Trump’s protectionism. This strategy would, at least, limit the US president’s ability to “divide and rule” by playing economically weakened countries off against each other.

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But the prime minister, who opened the session insisting no response would be ruled out, appeared to rule out the response. He commented: “I think that’s the wrong choice on defence, on security intelligence, for reasons that we’ve rehearsed across this chamber. I also think it’s wrong on trade and the economy.

“We have a balanced trade relationship with the US, and I believe that our interests are best served by calmly trying to secure a deal which is in our national interest, whilst at the same time preparing and leaving all options on the table.”

Davey hit back: “One of the options must be to work with our European allies, our Commonwealth allies and others. Because if we don’t tackle Trump’s tariffs, we could be saying goodbye to free trade for a generation.”

A Liberal Democrat press release overnight has more detail on the party’s stance. In it, foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller urges Starmer to work “with our Canadian and European allies in a united front against Trump, including retaliatory tariffs where necessary — as well as negotiating a bespoke new customs union agreement with the EU to better protect British businesses.”

Davey has placed his party broadly in line with British public opinion in this area — never a bad political strategy. YouGov polling this week notes that 71 per cent of Britons would support retaliating with tariffs if the US strikes. Just 11 per cent oppose this position.

Meanwhile, polling for Best for Britain has found 43 per cent of Britons believe that increasing trade with the EU is the best course of action. Just 14 per cent think improving relations with Trump in order to extract a tariff exemption is the right approach.

These surveys reflect a wider trend: Britons do not like the US president.

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Davey, leader of the third largest party in the commons, is uniquely placed politically to own the mantle of Britain’s premier anti-Trumper. The Conservatives under Badenoch, who boasts of a friendship with veep JD Vance, have flirted with MAGA opinion in recent time. The Greens, who too treat Trump with contempt, have struggled to cut through this parliament. And Reform operates as MAGA’s UK office — increasingly to its electoral detriment.

But most significantly, Starmer cannot — no matter how much Britain’s collective conscience wills it — turn on Trump like the leading man in a Richard Curtis flick. An overtly hostile footing would risk pushing Trump deeper into Putin’s sphere of influence.

Nonetheless, there is a balance to be struck — especially with a president so uniquely unpopular in Britain as Trump. And Davey’s implicit charge is that Starmer has proved too accommodating.

No 10 will recognise the political problem. Firstly, Starmer risks coming across as weak if he refuses to adopt the retaliatory footing that the EU, Mark Carney’s Canada and other allies look set to assume. Secondly, by continuing to hold Trump close — and even hosting him at a state visit — the president’s unpopularity risks rubbing off on Starmer.

The prospect of an unprecedented second state visit for this unpopular president is an albatross around Starmer’s neck.

If Britons rally against Trump, his MAGA ideologues and economic ultimatums, right now it is the Liberal Democrats that are best placed to benefit. The local elections on 1 May could represent the dawn of a broader political windfall.

Starmer, if his “pragmatic” approach fails to yield significant reward, could suffer.

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Lunchtime briefing

Trump tariffs of 20 per cent could ‘knock out’ government’s fiscal headroom, OBR warns

Lunchtime soundbite

‘Labour’s record is a car industry in crisis, even before tariffs. There are 25,000 more jobs now at risk.’

—  Kemi Badenoch accuses Keir Starmer of a “failure to negotiate” a trade deal with the US at prime minister’s questions.

Now try this…

‘Starmer offers big US tech firms tax cuts in return for lower Trump tariffs’
Via the Guardian.

‘Government Joins Reddit In Bid To Step Up Its Online Communications Strategy’
PoliticsHome reports.

‘Could time be up for the triple lock?’
Tali Fraser in ConservativeHome.

On this day in 2021:

Keir Starmer’s School Report

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The post PMQs verdict: Ed Davey bests Starmer by taking on Trump appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Already, there have been signs of rebellion on the Labour benches — with critical sentiment emanating beyond the usual suspects in the Socialist Campaign Group of left-wing MPs.

Today, as is a common occurrence at PMQs and a natural consequence of Keir Starmer‘s parliamentary supremacy, the order paper was dominated by Labour representatives. Of the fourteen parliamentarians selected to ask questions by the weekly ballot, ten were Labour politicians. (The Conservatives were afforded two). PMQs then, promised to provide at least some partial answers as the PLP pieces itself together — either in support or opposition to the government’s welfare reforms.

Would Labour MPs issue criticisms, cautiously call for additional clarity or offer their complete support? Would their silence be telling?

But first: Badenoch. The Conservative Party, its recent interventions suggest, largely supports the reforms that work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall announced yesterday. When it comes to PMQs, there is — in a counter-intuitive sense — a political opportunity in agreeing with the government on such an issue, as the ministerial line vies with the criticisms of backbench MPs.

Badenoch could have used her six questions to relentlessly pressure Starmer, goading the government in a bid to expand the political distance between the Labour front and backbenches. The very sight of Starmer and Badenoch in ostensible agreement on welfare would have sent quivers running along the Labour Party’s collective spine.

But Badenoch opted in instead to prepare the ground for the Conservative Party’s response to the spring statement on 26 March. According to the Tory leader, the due name “spring statement” is belied by the severity of the economic damage Starmer has already wrought. She repeatedly referred to Rachel Reeves’s forthcoming fiscal statement, in which the chancellor will unveil a host of economic forecasts, as an “emergency budget”.

The Conservative leader tends to keep her first question short and snappish. This afternoon was no different as she inquired of the PM: “The chancellor claimed that her [autumn] budget was a once in a parliament reset. So why are we having an emergency budget next week?”

The parliamentary to-and-fro proceeded predictably from this point. Starmer referenced the £20 billion “black hole” he claims the Conservatives left in the public finances. Badenoch accused Reeves of torching business confidence, and later called on the government to exempt hospices, pharmacies and care providers from the employer national insurance hike.

Starmer was at his strongest when he delivered his PMQs peroration. “I think she now calls herself a Conservative realist, well I am realistic about the Conservatives”, he declared in reference to Badenoch’s recent foreign policy speech.

“The reality is they left open borders… they trashed the economy… the NHS was left on its knees and they hollowed out the armed forces…”

The prime minister’s answer to Badenoch’s sixth and final question was a signal for interested politicos to heighten their focus.

Colum Eastwood, the first backbencher to address the House after the frontbench exchange, is not a Labour MP. But he sits on the government backbenches as a representative of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Labour’s sister party in Northern Ireland.

Eastwood’s intervention was stinging — and no doubt reflected a criticism shared by many in the Labour family. He described the case of a disabled constituent whose receipt of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) allowance will be halted under the government’s reforms. Eastwood told the House: “Under the Tory welfare system we were able to get that lady on PIP. Under the prime minister’s new proposed system she will get zero, nothing.

“And after 14 years of the Tory government and many of us wanted to see the back of them, can the prime minister answer one question: what was the point if Labour are going to do this?”

Starmer struggled with the serious, emotionally heavy nature of the question. His answer would not have satisfied the former SDLP leader. “We are proceeding on three principles that if you can work you should work, if you need helping to work the state should help you not hinder you, and if you can never work you must be supported not protected”, Starmer responded.

“They are the right principles but we can’t leave the current system as it is.”

Reeves and Angela Rayner, the PM’s frontbench outriders this afternoon, nodded in agreement. But the Labour cheer was isolated and brief — a potential sign that many MPs are not yet ready to row enthusiastically behind the government.

Some questions later, Starmer was blessed by an unforeseen reprieve as Brian Leishman, the Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, delivered his intervention. Since July last year, Leishman has acquired a reputation as one of Labour’s most outspoken — and Starmer-critical — backbenchers.

In a post to X earlier this week, Leishman warned the government: “The idea that more austerity is needed to counter the problems created by austerity the first time round is absolute madness.

“Reject all cuts, tax the richest and tackle the inequalities that are destroying our country.”

But speaking in the commons today, he asked about the workers facing redundancy from the Grangemouth industrial site. He opened his question by welcoming the government’s attempts to secure a future for the site with a £200 million investment. Starmer was able to respond to Leishman in the affirmative on this “very, very important issue”.

The exchange is a signal that the Labour Party has yet to succumb to open rebellion. Of all the questions asked by government MPs today, the vast majority were supportive. As we have come to expect, there were the usual set of planted questions that allowed Starmer to direct his fire at the parties stationed opposite, notably the Conservatives and the SNP.

Interestingly, representatives from both the Reform UK and Green parties also caught the speaker’s eye today — which saw Starmer challenged on both his insurgent right and progressive flanks.

Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Greens, was first up. She told the PM: “We have a deeply unfair, unequal economic system where vast numbers of people are struggling yet billionaires are getting richer and richer.

“Does the prime minister really think that the way to tackle this is to put the onus onto older people, children and now sick and disabled people rather than on the shoulders of the super rich with a wealth tax, those people who could most easily afford to pay?”

Starmer lent tentatively into his government’s progressive credentials before issuing a specific swipe at the Greens’ expense. He responded: “We do have a proportional tax system and we have raised taxon the wealthiest under this government. Her advice would count for a bit more if their manifesto hadn’t been a recipe for £80 billion of extra borrowing.”

Then it was the turn of Lee Anderson, the Reform chief whip, whose authority was recently repudiated by 20 per cent of his parliamentary party (Rupert Lowe). “I come to this chamber to ask sensible questions”, Anderson began.

The synchronous laughter of Labour MPs suggests the party is still largely on the same page when it comes to fighting Reform. With party leader Nigel Farage not in his place, Anderson added: “If we became net zero tomorrow, by how much would we reduce the Earth’s temperature by?”

After describing net zero as a “huge opportunity”, Starmer reflected on Reform’s recent travails. The party, he said, “would have better ideas if they stopped fawning over Putin.

“And I understand the member for Claton [Farage] wants to be prime minister. He can’t even lead a party that fits in the back of a taxi!”

But the last, most damning word was granted to Diane Abbott, the veteran Labour MP and mother of the House. Addressing the commons to the prime minister’s right (in a strict geographical sense), she said the government’s welfare reforms are “not about morality” — but “about the Treasury’s wish to balance the country’s books on the backs of the most vulnerable and poor people in this society.”

The prime minister was courteous initially, paying “tribute” to Abbott’s “passionate” advocacy. But Starmer insisted it was a “moral issue” that one-in-eight young people were not in employment, education or training.

He said that he was “not going to turn away from that” and added that he was “shocked that a million people, young people, are in that position, and I’m not prepared to shrug my shoulders and walk past it”.

Labour unity, despite Abbott’s polemic, is holding.

All else being equal, prime minister’s questions today painted the picture of a party in reasonably strong health. The usual sops and loyal recitation of planted questions presented the PM with opportunities to bruise his opponents.

But all else is not equal. After the welfare announcement yesterday, splinters in the PLP are beginning to show. Abbott, of course, can be filed in the draw marked “usual suspects” — she is not one the government whips will be seeking to woo in the coming weeks. Richard Burgon, another Socialist Campaign Group MP who recently had the Labour whip restored, can be considered with this same categorisation. In a post to X after PMQs today, he warned Starmer that his government could face the “mother of all rebellions” over its welfare reforms.

As things currently stand, a MOAR is what Labour’s likely rebels will need to exact considerable concessions from ministers. Starmer’s towering majority shields him from the prospect of a commons defeat.

It is also worth noting the strengths Starmer showed in the session today. The prime minister coped adeptly with the pressure applied by Badenoch, Reform and the Greens. The Conservative leader’s self-inflicted struggles — and her PMQs woes in particular — are sweet succour for an otherwise pressured prime minister.

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Lunchtime briefing

Keir Starmer calls sickness benefits bill ‘devastating’ as he defends reforms

Lunchtime soundbite

‘It’s clear Trump is being played by Putin — stringing him along and currying favour even as his savage war machine continues to push deeper into Ukraine.

‘Now is the time for the UK and our allies in Europe and the Commonwealth to redouble our efforts to support Ukraine’s defence and achieve a lasting peace.’

—  Responding to Vladimir Putin’s phone call with Donald Trump, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller commented as above.

Now try this…

‘Keir Starmer pulled the pin on steep welfare cuts. Now for the hard part’
MPs are digesting a sweeping social security shake-up that marks arguably the biggest test of the British prime minister’s authority yet, Politico’s Dan Bloomand Annabelle Dickson write.

‘Up to 1.2m disabled people will lose thousands in UK welfare overhaul, experts warn’
Via The Guardian.

‘Kemi Badenoch attacked for “killing growth” after axeing Tory net-zero pledge’
CBI warns that “now is not the time to step back” from green growth opportunities, the i reports. (Paywall)

On this day in 2024:

Conservative peer claims Rwanda is ‘perfectly safe’ if you don’t oppose the government

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The post PMQs verdict: Keir Starmer’s strengths and vulnerabilities were on show appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Starmer began the session sombrely as he paid tribute to British soldiers killed in Afghanistan in 2012. “Tomorrow marks 13 years since six young British soldiers were on patrol in Afghanistan when their vehicle was struck by an explosive, tragically killing them all”, he told MPs.

The statement follows the explosive row over remarks JD Vance delivered overnight on Tuesday, when he falsely implied (despite his claims to the contrary) that the UK and France have not fought a war in 40 years. In a friendly Fox News interview, Vance insisted that the US-Ukraine raw materials deal, which president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to sign, is “a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

At the time of Vance’s Fox News interview, only Britain and France had said they were willing to deploy troops in Ukraine to help police a peace settlement.

The fierce backlash to the ex-marine’s comments came from all corners of the House of Commons. Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Helen Maguire, a former Captain in the Royal Military Police who served in Iraq, accused Vance of “erasing from history the hundreds of British troops who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge called it “deeply disrespectful to ignore such service and sacrifice.”

Even Nigel Farage, convenor of MAGA’s UK office, dismissed the US vice president as “wrong, wrong, wrong.”

And so the prime minister’s statement today, as he listed the names of UK soldiers killed thirteen years ago in Afghanistan, can only be interpreted as a pointed rebuke of Vance’s position.

Starmer went on: “These men fought and died for their country, our country, and across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 642 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies. Many more were wounded.

“We will never forget their bravery and their sacrifice and I know the whole House will join me in remembering them and all who served our country.”

Starmer’s focus could also have been intended as a subtle swipe at Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader sat opposite the prime minister. She defied all logic and political reason yesterday by leaping to Vance’s aid when drawn on his remarks. Contradicting the stance adopted by her shadow defence secretary and several of her MPs, Badenoch said she had “looked at the comments” and concluded Vance did not disparage Britain.

“I know JD Vance quite well”, she told GB News, flanked by shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins in a Union Jack blazer. “I’ve looked at the comments. I don’t think he actually said that, a lot of people are getting carried away. They are saying loads of things, and getting quite animated, let’s keep cool heads.”

(The implication being that Cartlidge and a slew of Tory MPs were simply “getting carried away” with their well-received interventions.)

The episode is just the latest instance of recent Conservative ill-discipline, particularly as it pertains to the Trump administration and Ukraine. Just last week, a Tory spokesperson was forced to clarify that shadow Home Office minister Alicia Kearns was not speaking for the party when she called for Donald Trump’s invitation to a second, unprecedented state visit to be rescinded.

The true political content of this session, therefore, was to be found in Starmer’s opening subtext.

As for the frontbench exchange, Badenoch repudiated her crystallising reputation and opted for a distinctly conciliatory approach. (Perhaps the Tory leader’s advisers had limited her social media privileges in response to recent maladroit showings). Politicos witnessed a rare outbreak of civility as Badenoch questioned the prime minister, competently if unenthusiastically, on the government’s position on the evolving geopolitical situation.

The Conservative leader, quashing her every instinct and political impulse, stressed a series of cross-party talking points. But the truth is: she had little choice. There is no political advantage to be found in exploiting grave geopolitics for partisan gain — only ridicule and condemnation. And so Badenoch undertook her collegiate responsibilities, for the most part, ably.

For her first question, she asked what the prime minister is doing to help “rebuild” relations between Ukraine and the United States. Starmer said the Conservative leader was “absolutely right” that the UK must do “everything we can to ensure that the US, Europe and Ukraine are working together”.

He added: “I’m doing everything I can to play my part. [I am] in regular contact with all of the key players at the moment, including talking to president Zelensky yesterday afternoon.”

Badenoch thanked the prime minister for his answer. She then questioned him consecutively on Britain’s plan to place a “peacekeeping” force in Ukraine; attempts the government is making to persuade the US “that is also in their national interest to provide a security guarantee” to Ukraine; and on “concerning reports” that the Trump administration had instructed Britain to suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The back-and-forth was consummately cordial — the commons at its best, or worst, depending on one’s perspective.

And yet, perhaps predictably, Badenoch’s script shifted just in time for her last question. Her combative, Starmer-shredding impulses could be contained no longer. After five well-honed questions on geopolitical instability, the Conservative leader came for the government’s economic record.

Picking up a thread drawn by her penultimate question, Badenoch said she was glad that US-UK trade talks had started. But, she declared, Britons remain worried about economic security. The Conservative leader called for an “entirely new approach” to economic and energy security — and referred finally to farmers’ protests yesterday.

She closed: “People are hurting. Will he now change course so we have the economic security we know we need for our national security?”

The prime minister took a moment to steel himself. A second passed as Starmer shifted to an attack stance. His eventual riposte was well-targeted. “We were doing so well!”, he quipped to laughter among Labour MPs.

But the PM’s wide grin faded as soon as he recalled his stock response.

Starmer told the House of Commons: “What we inherited was insecurity in our economy. We inherited a £22 billion black hole, and we have now turned that around and got the highest investment coming into our economy, we’ve got wages higher than prices… interest rates are being cut.

“That’s the difference between stability with Labour and instability with the party opposite.”

This final exchange, prompted by Badenoch, ensured the prime minister ended the session in the ascendant.

It follows that there are questions to be asked of the Conservative leader’s ostensible strategy: to focus on consensus for five questions before pivoting to outright attack in time for her sixth and final intervention.

Starmer, as leader of the opposition from 2020-2024, mastered the exact reverse formation: he would ask five aggressive questions, before concluding on a point of consensus. This order, Starmer found, wrecks the prime minister of the day’s planned peroration — be they Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak.

In the position Badenoch found herself in today, she should have committed to maintaining the cross-party consensus for six questions. Instead, her final intervention presented the prime minister with a veritable free hit to slam the Conservatives on the economy.

The slip serves as a minor but pertinent reminder that the Conservative leader is still some distance away from mastering her despatch box duties.

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Lunchtime briefing

‘People who are wanted by British police for such appalling crimes should stand trial in our country.’

—  Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says four British women have accused Andrew Tate of rape and human trafficking, and that arrest warrants have been issued by UK police.

He asks if the PM agrees that “people who are wanted by British police for such appalling crimes should stand trial in our country”, and if he will “request an urgent extradition of the Tate brothers”.

Starmer responds as above.

Lunchtime soundbite

Now try this…

‘Ukraine and Trump will define Starmer’s legacy’
Recent diplomatic events crystallise what is at stake for PM, writes the FT’s Stephen Bush. (Paywall)

‘Out-of-date polls to wrong aid amounts: factchecking Trump’s Congress address’
Via the Guardian.

‘Trump softens on Zelenskyy in speech to Congress’
After berating the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office last week and cutting all military aid to Kyiv, Trump on Tuesday said he appreciated Zelenskyy’s climbdown, Politico reports.

On this day in 2024:

Conservative MP warns against right-wing shift as core vote could ‘die off’

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The post PMQs verdict: Keir Starmer’s subtext, directed at Vance and Badenoch, was scathing appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The novel approach, notwithstanding any lessons learnt from recent maladroit performances, recognises that in the grand scheme of the next 48 hours — the most crucial of Starmer’s premiership so far — this relatively tedious tussle with the Tory leader will not register.

The prime minister will have travelled straight from the chamber to the plane that will carry him to Washington DC — and to Donald Trump. Badenoch began by wishing the prime minister “every success” in his conversations with the US president. She said the visit “must serve our national interest” and asked what specific steps the Starmer will take to ensure Ukraine is involved in peace talks.

The prime minister thanked Badenoch for her support and restated his position that Ukraine “must be at the table” for peace talks on its future.

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Starmer, in a shock move on Tuesday, sought to strengthen his hand in his conversations with Trump by announcing a plan to ratchet defence spending toward 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027. Badenoch claimed credit for policy, particularly the idea to raid the foreign aid budget for funds. Referencing a letter she penned over the weekend, the Conservative leader insisted she was “pleased” the prime minister had taken her advice. But she pressed Starmer on the government’s claim that defence spending will rise by £13.4 billion in 2027 — when the real terms, inflation-adjusted figure is more like £6 billion.

“Which is the correct figure?”, Badenoch asked.

Starmer roundly and ruthlessly dismissed the Conservative leader’s claim to the mantle of thought leadership. “She didn’t feature in my thinking at all”, he insisted. “I was so busy at the weekend — I didn’t see her proposal.”

The comment stands as a parliamentary variant of the Jon Hamm elevator meme. “I don’t think about you at all”, Starmer in effect declared. It was fantastically savage. The prime minister added: “She’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation.

“It’s a desperate search for relevance.”

There was a compelling synergy to the attacks. Starmer’s comments pointed to a single conclusion: the Tory leader’s interventions are immaterial.

Badenoch’s claim that the Conservative Party, with her at the vanguard, is the UK’s foremost civilisational bulwark — the frontier legion defending Britain’s political order from encroaching barbarians — won short shrift from the prime minister. Her speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship “ARC” conference last week is, after all, ripe for ridicule in settings such as this.

The exchange is a reminder that Badenoch’s performances at radical right institutes and conservative “movements” are not divorced from the wider political landscape. The echoes can and will escape their original chamber. It is no surprise that Labour strategists have picked through her commentary — delivered to an audience of mostly American MAGA acolytes — and landed on the soundbite that casts her in the least forgiving light.

The Conservative leader cannot suddenly shrink from her ideological maximalism once she arrives in the commons chamber. She is on the record and therefore on the hook. Badenoch’s ARC speech provided ample ammunition for Starmer to discharge at the despatch box.

And Starmer did offer an answer to the Conservative leader’s inquiry. “If you take the numbers for this financial year and then the numbers for the financial year 27/28, that is £13.4 billion increase”, he asserted.

“That is the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, which will put us in a position to ensure the security and defence of our country and of Europe.”

But Badenoch was not content. “That wasn’t very clear”, she reflected, reiterating her claim there is an inconsistency in the proposed defence spending numbers. “How is it that the defence secretary says £6 billion and he says £13.4 billion?”, she asked again.

***This content first appeared in Politics.co.uk’s Politics@Lunch newsletter, sign-up for free and never miss our daily briefing.***

The prime minister jumped at the opportunity to deploy the same tactic that so definitively dispatched Badenoch last session: “We went through this two weeks ago, going through the same question over and over again”.

He repeated his previous answer, with added emphasis on every syllable. “If you take the financial year this year and then you take the financial year for 2027/28, the difference between the two is £13.4 billion. That is the same answer.

“If you ask again I will give the same answer again.”

Badenoch labelled the prime minister’s comeback “patronising”. Such a tone, she insisted, is no “substitute for answering questions”.

“He hasn’t answered. What he has said is different from what he said yesterday. We are still not clear where the money is coming from.”

It is a doomed, deeply politically misguided tactic. At this point, it was clear that the Conservative leader had received her answer on defence spending — or the best answer she could reasonably hope for. From here, Badenoch could have chosen to make an argument about how Starmer’s sophistry speaks to a lack of seriousness when it comes to the defence of the realm. But by repeating the same question, Badenoch appeared leaden — unable to think on her feet and roll with Starmer’s punches.

Badenoch’s call for clarity about the scale of the increase in defence spending is also belied by the fact that there is, in the end, no real confusion. It is no surprise that the government has decided to parade the cash-terms figure — in the same way that Badenoch’s apparent criticism, that this figure accounts for spending that would have happened anyway, is politically explicable.

There is no grand conspiracy at hand. The prime minister provided an acceptable — by PMQs standards — answer to Badenoch’s question. In the same vein as last session therefore, the Conservative leader was left carping from the sidelines about some politically moot detail.

Scrutinising fiscal sleight-of-hand is the job of the IFS, not LOTO. Badenoch failed to put forward a political case. Her angle was that the numbers do not stack up; Starmer’s argument is that the Conservative leader does not do her homework, which leaves her looking foolish when someone — her PMQs opponent to be specific — does. It’s easy to see which narrative fares better, and why.

Badenoch’s determination to script the same question without the slightest cognisance of the prime minister’s probable answer — and torture it beyond all political reason — is simply a recipe for irrelevance.

All that said, this was a slightly better PMQs for Kemi Badenoch than recent precedent. Last session, the Conservative leader’s reliance on Telegraph and Daily Mail headlines left her humiliated. The prime minister highlighted basic inaccuracies. The facts, it turned out, reflected poorly on the record of the last government in which Badenoch served.

The parliamentary recess that followed ensured Conservative MPs left the commons for their constituencies with a bitter taste in their mouth. A fresh wave of Badenoch-sceptic briefing followed.

The prime minister’s trip to Washington, of course, will lighten any Conservative post-PMQs hangover. But there is still no disguising that Badenoch is poor at this.

If the Tory leader really is the last custodian of civilisation, the evidence of her PMQs performances suggests we are doomed.

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MPs probe X official on whether ‘abhorrent’ racist, misogynistic posts violate rules

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‘Their disgraceful mercenary behaviour put profit before people and exploited the regulatory regime to evade accountability with fatal consequences.

And to my disgust and their shame, some have shown little remorse and have refused to even help fix the building safety crisis that they did so much to create.’

—  Investigations will be launched into seven organisations criticised in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner has announced.

Now try this…

‘Starmer aides consult Johnson policy chief on fighting Reform’
Munira Mirza has been brought into Downing Street to consult on Labour’s approach to multiculturalism, The Times reports. (Paywall)

‘Starmer slashes aid to fund major increase in defence spending’
Via the Guardian.

‘Starmer slashes aid to fund major increase in defence spending’
The Guardian’s Peter Walker writes.

On this day in 2024:

Former Conservative Party chair urges Rishi Sunak to ‘call out’ Islamophobia

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The post PMQs verdict: Keir Starmer brushes Badenoch aside with ease appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

But social media kudos does not generate the Westminster weather — the dismal write-ups of Badenoch’s first 100 days as Tory leader are ample proof. Perhaps this point explains her change of tack today.

This afternoon, the Conservative leader regurgitated — headline by headline — the front page splashes of those newspapers most friendly to the party. The Daily Telegraph and Mail newsrooms in effect dictated Badenoch PMQs script. But unfortunately for the Conservative leadership, the session arrived at an all too familiar conclusion.

First, the Tory leader grilled the prime minister on the UK’s immigration and refugee rules after the Telegraph reported on the case of a Palestinian family, who were granted the right to live in the UK after applying through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees.

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Badenoch said the decision, handed down by a judge, was “completely wrong, it cannot be allowed to stand”. She asked if the government would appeal the verdict.

“She is right”, Keir Starmer responded. “It is the wrong decision.”

But the prime minister went on to point out the grave error in Badenoch’s question, framed as an attack on the government’s immigration stance. He added: “She hasn’t quite done her homework because the decision in question was taken under the last government.”

Starmer closed: “It should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration, it should be the government that makes the policy, that is the principle and the home secretary is already looking at the legal loophole which we need to close in this particular case”.

But Badenoch was not done. Undaunted by the prime minister’s steady, assured response, the Tory leader insisted Starmer had “not answered the question.”

“If he plans to appeal, then the appeal may be unsuccessful and the law will need to be changed”, she began. “The issue we are discussing today is about judicial systems. We cannot be in a situation where we allow enormous numbers of people to exploit our laws in this way.”

She called on the prime minister to commit to bringing forward legislation to address any possible gap in the law, or amend the asylum bill that is currently making its way through parliament.

Starmer cooly referred back to his previous answer and informed Badenoch that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is already “working on closing this loophole”.

Then came the obligatory swipe at the Conservative Party’s record on immigration — a risk Badenoch consciously ran with this line of questioning. “They lost control of immigration”, Starmer said. Referring to the government’s borders bill, he accused the Conservatives of voting “against increased powers to deal with those that are running the vile trade of people smuggling”.

Badenoch was visibly affronted by the prime minister’s comeback. “If the prime minister was on top of his brief, perhaps he would be able to answer some questions”, she blasted.

Facing crescendoing heckles from the Labour benches, Badenoch called on the government to bring forward legal changes to clarify how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) should be treated in UK law. She asked: “Does he agree that we should legislate even if lawyers warn that this might be incompatible with human rights law?”

At this juncture, the prime minister had had enough.

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“She complains about scripted answers and questions, her script doesn’t allow her to listen to the answer”, Starmer responded. “She asked me if we’re going to change the law and close the loophole in question one, I said yes. She asked me again in question two, and I said yes. She asked me again in question three, it’s still yes.”

Conservative MPs found themselves stunned into silence and awkward expressions crept onto the faces of Robert Jenrick and Chris Philp, who flanked Badenoch as her frontbench outriders this afternoon.

The Tory leader had been stifled by her own script. Her response reflected her understandable frustration. “He’s not listening, he is too busy defending the international law framework”, Badenoch said.

The buffering Conservative leader had gotten stuck on the specifics of her first question and the prime minister’s reply. While Starmer did not directly declare he would look to appeal the verdict (Badenoch’s point), he did answer in a more substantive sense, revealing the government would address the “loophole” itself.

As such, by refusing to shift her focus and accept that not every question she asks from the despatch box will receive direct acknowledgement, Badenoch lost any semblance of momentum. The Conservative leader’s apparent inability to recognise the direction of a debate reflects poorly on her alleged attack-dog acumen — so lauded by her allies during the 2024 leadership election.

It also shows an inability, on behalf of Badenoch’s inner circle, to game out the prime minister’s answers and respond accordingly. One supposes the strategy was to ask very specific questions and, at every turn, call out Starmer for sidestepping. But the approach missed — and misses — the raw politics of prime minister’s questions. The Conservative leader’s technical rejoinders on the minutiae of the exchange reflect a serious lack of thoughtful planning by her PMQs team. She was left carping from the sidelines about some minor moot detail, as Starmer marched ahead.

Badenoch used her fourth question to make a more general point in an attempt to break into a wider stride. “This is precisely why we need to break the conveyor belt from arriving in the UK, to acquiring indefinite leave to remain, and then a British passport, and now a right to bring six family members here as well”, Badenoch insisted.

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She asked the prime minister: “Will he now support our plans to toughen the process on indefinite leave to remain and make getting a British passport a privilege, not a right?”

Badenoch’s reference to her first and only policy as Conservative leader invited Starmer’s return with a Labour attack line. He hit back: “They presided over record high levels of immigration. It reached nearly one million. It was a one nation experiment in open borders.”

For her final question, Badenoch switched papers and referenced a recent Daily Mail scoop. She accused the government of recruiting a chief inspector of borders who “lives in Finland and wants to work from home”. She asked why the British public should put up with this.

Starmer instantly countered that the individual in question was appointed in 2019 by the last government. He then worked from Finland for the following five years. “We’ve changed that and he is now going to be working from the United Kingdom full-time”, Starmer proclaimed.

Once again, it is striking just how poorly researched Badenoch’s questions are. The Conservative leader read the Daily Mail splash this morning and did no further digging, no checking of details — no deep thinking about how the attack line might backfire.

The exchange rather lends credence to the prime minister’s claim, issued in his first answer, that Badenoch does not do her “homework”. At the same time, the Tory leader accuses Starmer of not being across the detail. The whole approach is simply bizarre.

In her final question, Badenoch had also noted there are “very serious questions” being asked about the attorney general Lord Hermer, referencing comments made by Lord Glasman, the leading Labour peer, this week. “If we are serious about protecting our borders we need to make sure we appoint people who believe in our country and everything we stand for”, Badenoch said.

Starmer closed: “She talks about the attorney general. She sat round the cabinet table with an attorney who was later sacked for breaching national security.”

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This was, and I refuse to caveat this conclusion, a truly miserable performance by Badenoch. There was no sense of invention, no strategic nous nor rhetorical force. Her material, borne of the Telegraph and Mail, was poor — but her delivery and overall display was worse. Starmer was right to label the whole thing “tedious”. Perhaps that particular adjective is too kind.

It is right that Badenoch only has a narrow room for manoeuvre. She remains hostage to her party’s record on the economy, on public services — and on immigration in particular. And yet she feels duty-bound to address the latter topic to appease the right-wing press and fight back against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

What little political space Badenoch has been afforded however, she has proven singularly unable to exploit.

Let’s step back. The Conservative leader’s reputation as a combative commons operator was supposed to exact crucial gains for her party at prime minister’s questions. By relentlessly mauling Starmer, Badenoch would accomplish what Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat could not. Her early successes would impede Reform’s insurgency and win plaudits in the press.

But Badenoch is consistently dispatched by Starmer — whom Tories simultaneously ridicule as wooden and grey. The Conservative leader has surprised everyone with quite how poor she is at the part of the job her advocates insisted she would excel at.

Let’s cut that down: the Conservative leader has surprised everyone with quite how poor she is.

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UK needs ‘cool and clear-headed’ response to Trump steel tariffs, says trade minister

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‘The prime minister has so far sat back and allowed Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk to ride roughshod over UK interests while the Conservatives and Nigel Farage cheer them on.

‘The government needs to draw up plans for Tesla tariffs to hit Musk where it hurts, if Trump’s administration follows through with their threats to the UK steel industry’

—  Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey calls on the government to draw up plans for retaliatory “Tesla tariffs” on Elon Musk’s electric vehicle firm if Donald Trump carries out his threat to hit the UK steel industry with a 25% tariff on exports to America.

Now try this…

‘Members think Badenoch should lead the party into the next election – but only a third are sure’
The latest ConservativeHome survey.

‘Oliver Ryan joked about Jewish clothing in Labour WhatsApp group’
MP’s comments threaten to start a new antisemitism row as two MPs and 11 councillors were suspended, the Times reports. (Paywall)

‘Plan to scrap high court signoff for assisted dying sends bill in “wrong direction”, say MPs’
Via the Guardian.

On this day in 2020:

Made homeless by the state: Britain’s assault on women seeking asylum

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch puts in her worst performance yet appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

As is now convention, the prime minister emerges from his six-question showdown with the Conservative leader strengthened. Badenoch still fails to live up to her self-styled image as a merciless, combative commons operator.

The line of attack Westminster widely expected Badenoch to pursue this afternoon concerned the Chagos Islands deal, and the associated multi-billion pound price tag. The controversy has a tendency to remerge when the domestic news agenda is otherwise quiet. Its latest appearance follows a recent Timesreport, which suggested that the payments by the UK government to Mauritius could effectively double from £9 billion to £18 billion. That report has been denied by the Foreign Office.

Badenoch sought to capitalise on the latest Chagos Islands controversy for the vast majority of her opening spiel. “When Labour negotiates, our country loses”, Badenoch began — a point she made across several sessions at this point. She called the much-discussed deal “an immoral surrender so north London lawyers can boast at their dinner parties.”

That was the line the Conservative leader wanted to land this session: the prime minister is weak, clueless when it comes to Britain’s national interest and in hock to an international cabal of lawyers and human rights specialists. Starmer is driven by his desire for dinner party invitations in north London, Badenoch alleged; not by a commitment to bettering Britain, at home or overseas.

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The Tory leader addressed all these points before shuffling to her actual question — on the Rosebank oil and gas project. “When Labour negotiates we all lose”, she repeated. “Sometimes they don’t even bother. Why did the Energy Secretary [Ed Miliband] withdraw government lawyers from defending the case against the eco-nutters who want to obstruct Rosebank’s oil and gas fields?”

The prime minister, responding, chose to ignore the last part of Badenoch’s question and engaged at length with her commentary on the Chagos Islands. The Conservative leader’s decision to pivot away, once more, had presented Starmer an opportunity to go on the attack.

He repeated the government line that the UK struck the deal, following a lengthy negotiation conducted by both Conservative and Labour governments, due to national security concerns relating to the legal position of the Diego Garcia base.

In a detailed retort, Starmer declared: “This is a military base that is vital to our national security… a number of years ago the legal certainty of that base was thrown into doubt and let me be clear without legal certainty the base cannot operate in practical terms as it should, that is bad for our national security and it is a gift to our adversaries.”

The prime minister pointed out that the Conservatives had conducted 11 of the 13 rounds of negotiation with Mauritius. “They were right to do so”, he added. “That is why this government has completed that process and we were right to do so. I will set out the details when they are finalised and it will of course be presented to parliament.”

Starmer went on: “If the Leader of the Opposition is properly briefed on the national security implications, when she is asking these questions — which she is perfectly entitled to do — then she knows exactly what I am talking about in terms of national security and legal certainty.

“If, on the other hand, she is not properly briefed on the national security implications, she is not doing her job, she’s not concerned about national security and she’s not fit to be prime minister.”

The comment was an allusion to a recent report that suggested Badenoch missed a national security briefing about the Southport killings — as well as a wider consensus that the Conservative leader would be doing far better at PMQs, and generally, if she did the requisite homework. Badenoch tends to organise her six questions according to ideological instinct, with her subjects selected — we can only assume — from her social media feed of anti-Labour invective.

Across the session this afternoon, therefore, Starmer dismissed Badenoch as unserious and unwilling to engage with the details of the debate.

The Conservative leader rejected Starmer’s lengthy response, which went down extremely well among Labour MPs, as “weak and waffly”. “No wonder he needs a voice coach”, she added — in a reference to the claim that the prime minister broke lockdown rules when he met a voice coach during the winter of 2020. It is an allegation Starmer denies.

Badenoch asked again if the energy secretary will refuse to proceed with the Rosebank oil and gas project because of funding from “eco-zealots”.

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Starmer again, initially ignored Badenoch’s question. He hit back: “She didn’t say that she was briefed about the Chagos issue. This is important.

“When she became Leader of the Opposition, I said to her that I would give her a briefing on any national security issue if she asked for it — that’s very important to the way we run our democracy.

“She has not asked for a briefing on the Chagos Islands.”

The prime minister added: “In relation to oil and gas it will be part of our energy supply for many years to come. we have been absolutely clear about that. But we are going through a transition.”

The rest of the frontbench exchange developed along familiar lines, as Badenoch addressed several further topics — including Great British Energy, AstraZeneca and potential job loses — without troubling Starmer.

In the end, looking back on the session in the round, Badenoch and Starmer’s tussle was not nearly as politically significant as the ongoing exchange between Labour and Reform UK.

This episode began with a backbench Labour MP, John Slinger, asking a planted question about Nigel Farage’s recent comments on the NHS. That drew this scripted response from Starmer: “What a contrast with Reform, whose leader has said those who can afford to pay should pay for our healthcare. Under Labour, the NHS will always be free at the point of use.”

Farage, who was called by the speaker this afternoon, provided a response: “There appears to be some panic on that side of the House.”

Once the shouting and barracking from Labour MPs quietened, the Reform leader stitched the Chagos Islands topic together with winter pressures and controversial cuts to the fuel allowance.

Farage asked: “What do I say to 25,000 constituents in Clacton, including 99-year-old Jim O’Dwyer, who flew a full set of missions on Lancaster bombers as a tail-end Charlie, as they’re losing winter fuel allowance, feeling the pinch, while at the same time they’re willing to give away a military base and pay £18 billion for the privilege of doing so?”

Starmer’s answer was effective: “He talks of panic, the only panic is people using the NHS who know that under his policy he wants to charge them for using the NHS.

“What he should say to the people of Clacton — when he finally finds Clacton — is that they should vote Labour because we are stabilising the economy.”

Farage will not mind the drama and Labour’s relentless chuntering — it all plays into his narrative of an establishment backlash to Reform’s rise. Indeed, his pointed question — and Labour’s heightened focus on Reform — strengthens his pitch that he is the “real” leader of the opposition.

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Ed Miliband: ‘The mission of this government is to take back control’

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‘I have from the last few weeks two images fixed in my mind. The first is the image of Emily Damari reunited with her mother, which I found extremely moving.

The second was the image of thousands of Palestinians walking, literally walking through the rubble, to try to find their homes and their communities in Gaza.

They must be allowed home. They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild, on the way to a two state solution.’

—  Keir Starmer responds to a question from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey about Trump’s Gaza plan.

Now try this…

‘Hunt: Starmer should not retaliate if Trump hits UK with trade tariffs’
Via The Guardian.

‘Trump’s Gaza plan will be seen as flying in face of international law’
BBC News’ Tom Bateman writes.

‘Britain stresses out over which Marco Rubio it’s going to get’
Trump’s new secretary of state has been seen as a “committed internationalist.” The new right that swept his boss into power may be less interested in all that, writes Politico’s Esther Webber.

On this day in 2024:

NI leaders must ‘deliver for families and businesses’ after Stormont return, says Sunak

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The post PMQs verdict: Keir Starmer scorns Badenoch for not doing her homework appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The Conservative leader’s supporters continue to laud her ability to “cut through” and catapult herself into the headlines. (Not inherently a positive trait). But there could be no competing with the chancellor’s confirmation today, after weeks of feverish speculation, that the government supports plans for a third Heathrow Airport runway.

That said, Badenoch has frequently taken the government to task on the economy as part of her weekly inquisitions — and today was another chance for the Conservative leader to hone her argument.

In this sense, Badenoch’s case is straightforward enough: she maintains that ministers are choking, not kick-starting growth. Even more remarkable then, that Badenoch’s performance today was as incoherent, tetchy and misfiring as any of her prior maladroit showings.

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Taking to the despatch box, Badenoch began by accusing the prime minister of “destroying” growth. She referenced the “growth test” Starmer set himself on Tuesday: “If a policy is good for growth, the answer is yes. If it’s not, the answer is no”.

The Conservative leader continued: “Let’s look at the employment bill. The government’s own figures say it will cost business £5bn a year. It clearly fails the prime minister’s growth test. Will he drop it?

Starmer’s curt but effective comeback was typical of a more punchier performance this afternoon: “I think the proposition they left a golden inheritance was tested on 4 July [the general election].”

He added: “There’s more to do with reforming planning and regulation, building the new homes that we need, supporting a third runway at Heathrow. And as she admitted to the CBI in November, ‘there’s no point me just complaining about Labour’, she said. ‘It’s obvious that we Conservatives lost the confidence of business.’

“We’re not taking lectures from them.”

With this predictable response, Badenoch’s second question wrote itself — or so you would think. The prime minister had referenced business consternation about the Conservative Party’s record in government; Badenoch could hit back with more recent denouncements of Labour’s economic programme. But what followed was nothing short of bizarre.

Swerving away from her line of inquiry, Badenoch accused the prime minister of having “misled” the House of Commons last week — a significant transgression of parliamentary rules. She referred back to their exchange on schools and suggested the PM “was not on top of his own education bill.”

To accuse a prime minister of knowingly providing false information to parliament is as serious a charge as an opposition politician can level. Until the privileges committee reported in 2023, Keir Starmer never once accused his bête noire Boris Johnson of misleading the House over Partygate from the commons despatch box. But Badenoch chose to do so today, three months into her tenure as Tory leader, over the prime minister’s stance on an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

The speaker, as commons rules oblige, was fast to his feet. “We can’t accuse the prime minister of misleading the House”, Sir Lindsay Hoyle insisted. “We can’t do it! I’m sure that there’s words you would prefer to use.”

Badenoch, deprived of all momentum, was forced to reconfigure her question. “Last week, he claimed to have laid down an amendment that he had not made. He doesn’t know what is going on in here or out there”, she told MPs.

Having thoroughly explored this rhetorical and political cul-de-sac — angering the speaker in the process, Badenoch returned to Labour’s proposed changes to employment rights. “This isn’t an Employment Bill, it is an unemployment bill”, she blasted.

Starmer rejected the criticism: “We believe in giving people proper dignity and protection at work, that is why we are proud of our record supporting workers.”

The Conservative leader has consistently criticised the prime minister as being a “lawyer, not a leader” — having repeated the attack line (first deployed by Boris Johnson) across successive sessions. When Badenoch mocked the employment bill as “an adventure playground for lawyers” therefore, Starmer had a comeback ready.

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He told the House: “I understand she likes straight talking. She is talking absolute nonsense. She knows and anybody who understands anything about the bill or any employment law will know you can’t start in the morning and got to a tribunal in the afternoon.

“We know she is not a lawyer, she is clearly not a leader. If she keeps on like this she is going to be the next lettuce.”

It was a reference to the infamous Daily Star live stream, which pit a shrivelling shop-bought lettuce against then-prime minister Liz Truss in a battle to the death. As is now Westminster folklore, the lettuce triumphed.

Indeed it wasn’t even close. Six days after the Daily Star began its livestream on 14 October, Truss announced her resignation on the steps of Downing Street. It is little surprise then that Badenoch reportedly told her shadow cabinet earlier this month that she wants “Liz Truss to shut up for a while”. It came after Truss penned a “cease and desist” letter to the prime minister demanding he stop saying she crashed the economy. In PMQs last week, Starmer brandished the letter — and unapologetically repeated the accusation.

Starmer, of course, is far less keen for the name ‘Liz Truss’ and the memory of the vegetable that vanquished her to fade into obscurity. The former prime minister’s political brand remains her successor-but-one’s favourite punching bag.

Lettuce-themed attacks aside, Starmer also punished Badenoch this week for her recent comments about pensions. Badenoch’s triple lock controversy, which she triggered with an off-kilter comment on LBC, epitomises her pitfalls as a political operator. The prime minister showed real political purpose in exploiting that this afternoon.

In response to a planted question from Labour backbencher Damien Egan, Starmer said: “Let me absolutely clear Mr Speaker, there will be no means testing of the state pension under this Labour government. … [The Conservative Party] would cut pensions. We’re increasing them”.

During the frontbench exchange, Starmer added: “The only policy she’s got is to shrink pensions.”

We are still some time away from the specialists at the Daily Star brandishing a leaf vegetable at Badenoch’s expense. But her repeat poor performances at the despatch box are welcome solace for an otherwise pressured prime minister.

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Belief that Britain was right to leave the EU falls to new low of 30%, poll finds

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‘He knows in relation to the reset with the EU… that we have clear red lines when it comes to the single market and the customs union, so he knows where we stand on that.’

—  Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey urges the prime minister to take the UK into a Continent-wide customs deal with the EU. Keir Starmer responds as above.

Now try this…

‘Labour figures come out against chancellor’s “environmentally illiterate” plans’
PoliticsHome reports.

‘Heathrow third runway: a saga of promises, protest and U-turns’
The Guardian reports.

‘Britain’s Rachel Reeves needs a growth miracle’
All the big hurdles to an economic turnaround as the UK chancellor makes her pro-growth pitch, writes Politico’s Dan Bloom.

On this day in 2024:

Miliband hints Labour could recruit Alok Sharma, Chris Skidmore for climate mission

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch’s poor performances invite ‘lettuce’ taunt appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

PMQs, which sees Badenoch permitted six such questions, was the Conservative leader’s opportunity to get some answers. But she did not seek them.

Addressing the House from the despatch box, Badenoch turned down the opportunity to interrogate Keir Starmer over his alleged “failings”. She clarified she would “return” to this particular line of inquiry once the case is concluded.

Badenoch’s decision to avoid a battle on Southport was politically astute, if long-belated. Had Starmer been subjected to six questions over his handling of the incident, the Conservative Party would have faced accusations of “politicising” the tragedy. In any case, the prime minister stridently defended his response to the Southport attack in his press conference on Monday morning. Answering criticism that ministers were not transparent enough, Starmer insisted that any intervention would have compromised the legal process. He would have made that same argument today, quite happily and confidently.

Perhaps more pertinently, Badenoch risked being outdone in her criticism of the PM by Nigel Farage and Reform — as has been a prevalent theme of her tenure as Tory leader. This morning, Farage labelled the prime minister “cover up Keir” (the latest of the PM’s nicknames propagated by Online Right types), and argued government officials withheld information about the attack that the “public were entitled to.”

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This afternoon therefore, rather than face accusations of “politicising” the attack from Labour — and not going far enough in politicising the attack from Reform, Badenoch pursued her own path. She opted to press the prime minister on education and the government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which cleared its commons second reading earlier this year.

Education is viewed as one of the few success stories the Conservative Party can tell about its period in office. Badenoch’s charge was that, over the last fifteen years, pupil attainment in maths, reading and science has soared — with English schools now top of global league tables in the subjects. Labour, she argued, was now “reversing” this progress and willingly committing an act of “educational vandalism”.

This is the first session the Conservative leader has dedicated to a single policy question; scattergun holstered, she was able to build and prosecute a sustained argument. On the whole, Starmer was prepared for Badenoch’s curveball. But the exchange was far more balanced than recent battles.

The Conservative leader described Labour’s school reforms as an “attack on excellence” and “the worst of socialism”. She deployed a favourite Tory tactic by invoking Wales which, Badenoch said, has “tumbled down league tables” because of Labour policy. She added: “Poor children in England now do better than wealthier children in Wales.”

The passage that most pleased Badenoch’s backbenchers came when she questioned who would benefit most from Labour’s education reforms. “It is not teachers”, the Tory leader insisted, “their pay is being capped. It is not parents. Their choices are being restricted. It is definitely not children. Their outcomes will get worse.

“So who is benefiting? It is the trade unions. The National Education Union sent out a tick list proving that after a decade and a half, they are finally getting their way. Why is the education secretary allowing trade unions to run her department and ruin children’s education?”

Under genuine assault from Badenoch for the first time as PM, Starmer staunchly defended his government’s stance. “The bill benefits the children who need the nourishment of a breakfast club. The bill benefits the families that can’t afford uniforms. The bill benefits the children who are currently out of school and nobody knows where they are”, he said. On another occasion, the prime minister pointed out that academies were actually introduced by the last Labour government.

These points aside, the prime minister focused his responses on the safeguarding reforms in the bill, as opposed to its educational elements. Starmer’s subtle swerving was a signal Badenoch was asking the right questions.

The PM’s strongest moment came when Badenoch said his plan to levy VAT on independent schools would catch schools teaching children with special educational needs and disabilities in the crossfire. The prime minister responded: “She talks about special needs. She’s got a nerve. [Tory MPs] have asked me questions at these PMQs about the appalling situation of special needs under their watch.

“We’re going to fix that mess, like we’re fixing every other mess!”

In the end, Badenoch’s improved performance today serves as the exception that proves the rule. The Conservative leader did not leap onto the latest headlines, she declined the passing bandwagon — and was rewarded for it.

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There is a deeper lesson here then. The second reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on 8 January came in the week when Westminster was consumed by Elon Musk’s conspiracist invective. At the time, rather than debate the substance of the bill, Badenoch took to the despatch box chasing a Musk retweet. She urged the prime minister to establish a national inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation; refusing to do so, she added, would ensure that people start worrying “about a cover-up”.

In response, Starmer referred to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in terms that reflected positively on his government. “What can’t be tolerated is the idea that this afternoon, members opposite will vote down a bill which protects children”, he argued. The Conservative Party had tabled an amendment to the legislation, nominally urging the government to establish a national inquiry. At second reading however, MPs can only propose amendments that set out their objections to a bill; (committee stage is when MPs propose and vote on line-by-line changes). If passed, the amendment would have achieved nothing.

In other words, the Conservative leader forfeited an opportunity to tell a story about the last government’s education successes, in favour of a more newsy, but fundamentally more tactless Musk-inspired line of attack.

After all, Badenoch won a Musk retweet; but lost the PMQs exchange. Starmer emerged strengthened.

The Conservative leader’s decision to address education today was long overdue. Tory MPs will be hoping that Badenoch has learnt from her recent PMQs showings, and will adopt this less reactive, more disciplined approach as standard.

But Conservative MPs will also be reminded of the risk. Commenting on PMQs, Nigel Farage posted to X (formerly Twitter): “Not a single question on Southport from Kemi Badenoch… What is the point of the Tories?”

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Lunchtime briefing

Chair of child sexual abuse inquiry calls last government’s response ‘awful’ and ‘inconsequential’

Lunchtime soundbite

‘We will work with the US. We will work with other countries, but we will never lower our standards’

—  Keir Starmer responds to question on UK-US relations in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration this week. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey asked if the prime minister would sell out Britain’s farmers to Trump in a trade deal that “undermines our food and animal welfare standards”.

Now try this…

‘Trump rewrites the violence of January 6 and ‘legitimates future ones’
If criminal charges were meant to deter acts of violence, the pardons of over 1,500 people do the opposite, say experts, reports the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang.

‘Our survey. Badenoch falls to seventh place in our Shadow Cabinet League Table’
Via ConservativeHome.

‘The tide is starting to turn against Brexit’
Interventions by Ed Davey and Kemi Badenoch show how the European question has been reopened, writes former cabinet minister and NS columnist David Gauke. (Paywall)

On this day in 2024:

Sadiq Khan attacks Labour’s Brexit ‘omerta’ over rejoining EU customs union

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch, belatedly, picks the right battle appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The Conservative leader arrived in SW1 today, as she often does on Wednesday, with a wide range of bruises to punch. Tulip Siddiq, the anti-corruption minister, resigned yesterday after she was named in a corruption investigation. Siddiq had been cleared by Sir Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards. But Sir Laurie suggested she should have been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” from her family’s association with Bangladesh.

Siddiq, of course, has left her Treasury post during a rough week for the department. The escalating cost of government debt has narrowed Rachel Reeves’ “fiscal headroom” and prompted speculation as to future spending cuts and tax rises.

But across her PMQs performances, Badenoch has exhibited a canny knack for making Starmer appear significantly less vulnerable than he actually is. Perhaps the Conservative leader has found her abundant subject matter a burden; gripping the despatch box on a Wednesday afternoon, Badenoch takes MPs through the news bulletins bereft of a cohesive narrative that could tie her onslaught together. And by broaching an array of topics, she supplies Starmer with ample escape routes.

Suffice it to say, Badenoch’s inability to land a blow on Starmer — when he is at his most exposed — has diminished expectations for her PMQs showings. As such, by the Tory chief’s established standards, Badenoch was sharper this afternoon.

She started with the most salient topic: the economy. Badenoch asked Starmer to admit that his fiscal policies meant “fewer jobs, lower growth and higher borrowing costs”.

The prime minister — shock incoming — issued no such admission. Instead, he insisted that the global economy is “experiencing volatility” and pointed to the £22 billion black hole purportedly left by the Conservatives in the public finances.

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But Badenoch stuck to her guns — for the time being at least. She castigated Reeves’ budget borrowing and tax “spree” which, she argued, had “ignored all the warnings”.

The prime minister then refused to rule out further tax increases, contrary to Badenoch’s request. “We took the right and difficult decisions at the budget. Decisions that they did not have the courage to take which left us in the mess in the first place”, he said.

At prime minister’s questions, Badenoch tends to pivot when Starmer looks most uncomfortable. And today was no different. The chancellor is “apparently promising to be ruthless in reducing spending”, the Conservative leader noted. “Let me suggest something that he should cut. There is no way that we should be giving up British territory in Chagos.”

The arguments on the Chagos Islands handover are well-rehearsed. Conservative spokespeople insist ministers are “rushing” through a “surrender” deal, and landing taxpayers “with a multi-billion pound bill” in the process.

Starmer has repeatedly rejected this characterisation. “We inherited a situation where the long-term operation of a vital military base was under threat because of legal challenge”, he argued this afternoon.

In other words, Badenoch wasted a question on a topic that she has already dedicated significant time to this parliament; and, in doing so, shifted from a topic — the economy — where Labour is under genuine pressure.

This approach, otherwise perplexing, could well reflect ascendant anxieties over the extent to which Badenoch is herself exposed in such debates. The Conservative leader, after all, served as business secretary in the last government — and Starmer seems at his most comfortable when deriding his predecessors’ record. At present of course, the Conservatives do not have a coherent economic programme; so far, they have refused to criticise Labour’s spending — but torched its tax rises. As the PM pointed out today, Badenoch’s sums do not add up.

Does Badenoch shift so frequently, therefore — because, well, she is scared what Starmer could retort is she did not?

With no real substance left to add, Badenoch addressed the Chagos Islands controversy for a single further sentence: “There’s no one he can blame for this dud deal”, she blasted.

But then Badenoch U-turned in real-time, a full 360 degrees, to reappraise Reeves’ record as chancellor. She said Labour had been busy congratulating themselves on ushering the “first female chancellor” into office — and less concerned with appointing “someone who can actually do the job”.

In response, Starmer deployed some Donald Trump-esque preterition: the PM insisted from the outset that he would not “cheaply” criticise the Conservative Party’s Treasury revolving door — which span five chancellors into office from 2022-2024 — as he wouldn’t have “enough time”. It was a novel, well-targeted rhetorical technique. Labour MPs lapped it up.

And so Badenoch shifted gear once more, opting to question the prime minister’s judgement over the resignation of Tulip Siddiq. “What does it tell us about his judgement that yesterday he said he was ‘saddened’ that his close friend resigned?”, Badenoch posited.

This represents the first occasion on which Badenoch has raised the city minister at PMQs — which, given Siddiq resigned yesterday, suggests the Conservative Party could be behind the story. Indeed, the saga is a reminder of the potential political gain Badenoch squandered last week, with her Musk-inspired line of inquiry.

The prime minister responded that there was “no breach” of the ministerial code and “no wrongdoing”. The subject also presented Starmer with an opportunity to continue his Tory-Labour compare and contrast routine.

He said: “Compare that with the shadow foreign secretary [Priti Patel], who breached the ministerial code, her predecessor bar two ignored it. It was the adviser that had to resign because it wasn’t taken seriously.

“What a contrast, thank God the British public chucked them out.”

For her final question, Badenoch attempted to tie her parallel lines of inquiry together. But the political geometry did not stack up.

First, she turned to Louise Haigh, the transport secretary who resigned in November, and accused Starmer of “knowingly” hiring a “convicted fraudster”. She went on: “No answer to investigating dodgy Labour ministers, just as last week he didn’t want an inquiry that might have exposed dodgy Labour councils.”

“The anti-corruption minister he had full confidence in only days ago, resigned yesterday in disgrace.”

“He is negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory, and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”, Badenoch continued. “Now it turns out his government might write a cheque to compensate Gerry Adams. This is shameful”. (This was a reference to proposed changes to the law that could allow the former Sinn Féin president to claim compensation for unlawful detention).

Badenoch added: “In just six months under his leadership, it’s been taxes up, borrowing up, mortgage rates up — and thats not all, business confidence is down, jobs are down, growth is down.”

The up-down gimmick will be entirely familiar to frequent spectators of PMQs. The goal is to corral one’s backbenchers so that they join you in emphasising the “ups” and “downs” — standard political-parliamentary procedure. But the apathetic response from Badenoch’s Conservative troops was telling.

A smattering of Conservative MPs, presumably on the frontbench payroll, joined Badenoch for the up section. Her own de facto deputy Alex Burghart joined in for the first down. But it was awkward. He soon gave up. As did most other Tory MPs.

Finally, having suitably exhausted her party’s enthusiasm, Badenoch asked: “Can the country afford four more years of his terrible judgement?”

Starmer dismissed Badenoch’s prolix as a “barrage of complete nonsense”. But he drew out her segment on Gerry Adams, which he said he needed to “address”.

“[The Legacy] Act was unfit, not least because it gave immunity to hundreds of terrorists and wasn’t supported by victims in Northern Ireland nor I believe by any of the political parties in Northern Ireland.

“The courts found it unlawful. We will put in place a better framework. We are working on a draft remedial order and replacement legislation and we will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases claiming damages. It is important I say that on the record.”

Starmer then rolled into his usual peroration, and brutally deployed Labour’s trump card on the economy: Liz Truss.

“I got a letter this week from a Tory voter in a Labour seat. It was Liz Truss”, the PM began. Cleary unfazed about Truss’s threat to sue him, Starmer added: “She was saying that claiming she crashed the economy was damaging her reputation. It was actually crashing the economy that damaged her reputation”.

Turning to Badenoch, he closed: “Her party is like a blank piece of paper blowing in the wind. No wonder the electorate put them in the bin.”

In total, Badenoch broached at least six separate topics today, and failed to cause Starmer significant concern on any. She planned to tell a story about the prime minister’s judgement — which only became clear with her final sentence. But her otherwise aimless strategy merely reflected her own, or lack thereof.

Badenoch’s PMQs sessions have begun to paint a picture: her wayward questioning reflects her wayward, incoherent tenure as Tory leader. Once again, after facing a barrage of accusations courtesy of Kemi Badenoch, Starmer emerges politically strengthened.

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Attorney general says populism poses ‘one of the most profound challenges of our age’

Lunchtime soundbite

‘Does he agree if people like this want to come to our country to bring their money and their skills so we can grow our economy and pay for our public services, they should be able to?’

—  “Wealthy, high-skilled Americans” seeking to move to the UK because of an incoming Trump presidency have “no visa they can apply for”, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey tells Keir Starmer at PMQs.

Now try this…

‘Badenoch’s call for new grooming gangs probe reflects old fixations’
From Stephen Bush of the FT: “The Tory leader raises valid concerns but her diagnosis suggests she has not looked at all the evidence”. (Paywall)

‘Giving Tulip Siddiq anti-corruption job seen by insiders as own goal’
Some in No 10 wish they had thought a bit more about how it looked before giving job to niece of ousted Bangladesh PM, the Guardian’s Pippa Crerarwrites.

‘Knives are out for Britain’s boxed-in finance minister’
If Rachel Reeves succumbs, “the wolves” are likely to turn on embattled PM Starmer, Politico reports.

On this day in 2024:

Senior Conservative suggests Rwanda bill rebels are ‘betraying’ party traditions

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch’s misfires are strengthening Starmer appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The backdrop to the issue’s sudden prominence is well-rehearsed, and concerns the social media antics of one individual above all others: tech industrialist and MAGA efficiency tsar, Elon Musk. In recent weeks, Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) feed has been transformed into a minute-by-minute deluge of twisted conjecture — disseminated, principally, at prime minister Keir Starmer’s expense.

Starmer hit back at Musk earlier this week in the Q&A portion of an already-forgotten New Year speech on the NHS. “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible”, the prime minister insisted, “they’re not interested in victims. They’re interested in themselves.”

The bottom line is this: Starmer is at war with the richest man in the world, and opposition parties sense an opportunity. Indeed, Kemi Badenoch surely had a prized Musk retweet in mind as she prepared her line of inquiry for PMQs this afternoon.

But she began measuredly. Addressing MPs for the first time in 2025, the Conservative leader noted how the grooming scandal “destroyed many lives forever”. She agreed with the government that there has been an inquiry into child sexual abuse — but added: “Is the prime minister confident that we know the full extent of rape gang activity?”

Starmer immediately referred to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) led by Professor Alexis Jay which reported in October 2022. He insisted that “what is needed now is action on what we already know” rather than a further investigation.

“The Jay report called for mandatory reporting”, Starmer said. “I called for it eleven years ago. What we need now is action. What can’t be tolerated is the idea that this afternoon, members opposite will vote down a bill which protects children.”

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The prime minister was referencing the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which faces its second reading in the House of Commons today. The Conservative Party has tabled a “wrecking amendment” to the bill which calls on the government to establish a national inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation.

At this stage however, MPs can only propose amendments that set out their objections to a bill; (committee stage is when MPs propose and vote on line-by-line changes).

Ergo, if the Conservative amendment is passed by the House of Commons this evening, it would kill the bill. But it would not compel the government to establish a national inquiry.

Nonetheless, on an apparent point of principle, Badenoch insisted that a new inquiry is needed to uncover the full extent of the grooming gangs scandal. “He knows full well [that the last Conservative government] accepted 18 of the 20 recommendations in the Jay Inquiry and went further launching a gangs taskforce”, she said.

Badenoch added: “But no one has joined the dots, no one has the total picture”.

Starmer rejected the Conservative leader’s characterisation of the last government’s response to the Jay report. “They’ve been tweeting and talking”, the PM said, “we’ve been acting”.

“The leader of the opposition has been an MP for eight years. Her party have been in government for seven and a half of those eight years. She was the children’s minister, women and equalities minister. I can’t recall her once raising this when she was in power.”

Starmer blasted: “It is only in recent days she has jumped on the bandwagon”.

He closed with a challenge: “If I’m wrong about that… I invite her to say that now and I will happily withdraw the remark.”

Badenoch could not deny the charge. She instead accused the prime minister of being “very specific”, and referred to occasions when she spoke on the scandal outside of the House of Commons “in speeches”.

To jeers and groans from the government benches, Badenoch continued: “Does he not see that by resisting [a national inquiry] people will start to worry about a cover up?”

A visibly affronted Starmer responded: “This is an important issue and we have to focus on the victims and survivors. And this sort of lies and misinformation and slinging of mud doesn’t help them one bit.”

Starmer also sought to contrast his record as Britain’s top prosecutor between 2008 and 2013 with Badenoch’s as a government minister. Starmer stressed he “put Asian men in the dock” and tried to remove barriers that stopped victims of abuse coming forward.

With her PMQs strategy and amendment gambit, Badenoch is playing with political forces that could soon consume her — ones that she shows little interest in meaningfully interrogating. The Conservative Party is immensely exposed to any accusation of inaction or incompetence in government, and the issue of historical child sexual exploitation is no different.

This afternoon, Badenoch dismissed the charge she could have made more of the issue during the Conservatives’ fourteen years in power. But her calls for a national inquiry into the scandal are, nonetheless, strikingly sudden. As Nigel Farage tweeted just ten minutes before PMQs began: “Kemi Badenoch was Minister for Women and Equalities from 2022 to 2024. Why did she not demand a full inquiry then?”

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Meanwhile, Badenoch’s aside on a “cover up” was designed to appease and accommodate political currents to her right, as stirred by Elon Musk in recent weeks. It’s a risky approach. Farage has been burned by Musk. How will the narrative shift if/when Musk learns about Badenoch’s position in the last government — and Farage’s charge of inaction?

This is, in the end, another instance of the Conservative leader failing to come to terms with her party’s vulnerabilities. The response to child sexual exploitation is not a typical political dividing line. But like Badenoch’s recent questions on inflation and immigration, she is still refusing to confront the reality of her party’s reputation — and how her opponents, on both the left and right, can weaponise it.

Starmer is broadly right to suggest Badenoch jumped on a bandwagon with her PMQs interrogation. That characterisation could itself deepen the Conservative leader’s woes.

But more broadly, those already on the “bandwagon” could reject Badenoch’s advocacy, however enthusiastic, on account of her party’s record in government. The Conservative leader might have sensed an opportunity to get into the Online Right’s good graces after the Farage-Musk schism. But it is a dangerous game.

And yet, does the Conservative leader have any choice but to play? Her forceful opposition to the government’s stance on the grooming gangs scandal is borne, in part, of the kind of opportunism that opposition parties are often compelled to embrace. But it is perhaps better explained in terms of an ascendant Conservative anxiety over the rise of Reform UK.

Badenoch has spent most of her tenure as Tory leader embracing rows that, she hopes, will place her party on the right side of public opinion. In turn, there has been no meaningful attempt at soul-searching — and only scant apologies. The polls suggest Badenoch has won little credit. This latest row, one expects, will not be any different.

After all, Reform is making the same arguments as Badenoch on historical child sexual exploitation — but without the baggage of a recent record in government. One can replace the words historical child sexual exploitation with most other issues, and the observation holds. That is the dilemma that Badenoch is failing to confront.

This afternoon, Starmer ended the session by appealing to Tory MPs to reject their party’s amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill. “I urge them to think twice about following this shortsighted, misguided, bandwagon-jumping approach of the non-leadership of the leader of the opposition”, he said.

It may not be reflected in the commons division lobbies this evening — but it’s surely only a matter of time before Conservative MPs begin to express their misgivings about Badenoch’s leadership strategy.

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Lunchtime briefing

Starmer: Conservatives and Reform prioritising ‘retweets’ over ‘safeguarding of children’

Lunchtime soundbite

‘I think we all had a smile on Sunday when [Nigel Farage] said how cool it was to have the support of Musk, only for Musk to say he should be removed just a few hours later.’

—  Keir Starmer comments on the Musk-Farage break-up at PMQs. Full clip here.

Now try this…

‘Jess Phillips hits back at Elon Musk and says he should ‘crack on with getting to Mars’’
Sky News reports.

‘Rachel Reeves’ fiscal nightmare’
The New Statesman’s George Eaton on why the Chancellor is set to impose new spending cuts. (Paywall)

‘We still don’t know cause of grooming gangs, says scandal reporter’
Andrew Norfolk, The Times journalist who first revealed the abuse in 2011, says there needs to be proper research into the issues that let criminals flourish. (Paywall)

On this day in 2024:

Government must ‘admit’ things have got worse since 2010, says Conservative MP

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The post PMQs verdict: Kemi Badenoch is playing a dangerous game appeared first on Politics.co.uk.