There are plenty of weeks when PMQs is far from the top story in political news, but one would not normally expect the first session of a new party leader to fall into that category. Nonetheless, when the Conservative Party set out its timeline for electing a new leader they knew attention would be across the Atlantic. They perhaps did not predict that Donald Trump would have just been elected for a second term.
Kemi Badenoch sought to turn the risk of being overshadowed to her advantage, by seizing on the topic of the day and highlighting Labour’s awkward history with the new US President-elect. Beginning on a characteristically combative note by thanking Keir Starmer for his “almost warm welcome”, she turned at once to past comments made about Trump by David Lammy before Labour were in office. She decried Lammy’s “derogatory and scatological references” and asking if Starmer would apologise for his Foreign Secretary’s description of Trump as “not only a women-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath, he is also a profound threat to the international order”.
Questions two and three were on the same theme of how a Labour government could possibly cope with a Trump White House. Badenoch accused Labour MPs of being “student politicians” for previously signing a motion opposing the idea of Trump addressing parliament and pressed Starmer on whether he would agree to such an address. She then asked about restarting negotiations for a UK-US trade deal, which the Biden administration had cancelled.
Starmer, for his part, refused to be goaded. As George Eaton outlined this morning, this is not the US election result Labour wanted, but it is one the government was prepared for. Starmer and Lammy had a two-hour dinner with Trump in September which is considered to have gone well, and the Foreign Secretary has been working hard for the past two years to undo the damage of his past comments and forge relationships with key Republicans, most notably JD Vance. While Labour MPs might be devastated this morning, the government is refusing to let its dismay show. Both Starmer and Lammy have issued carefully-worded statements of congratulations to Trump – a sentiment Starmer reiterated right at the start of the PMQs session.
Badenoch succeeded in drawing attention to the obvious awkwardness in as robust terms as possible, but Starmer’s response was blandly statesmanlike: he spoke about the Trump dinner being “a very constructive exercise”, talked in broadbrush terms about working with the new administration on areas of mutual interest, and declined to respond about the Lammy comments entirely. If Badenoch brought the fire, Starmer’s tactic was to coolly let herself burn out. He joked that she was offering her own “masterclass in student politics”, hinting that her decision to kick off her tenure as opposition leader by seeking to score points over the election while the government was making every effort to be neutral was perhaps just a tad immature.
Trump’s victory offered easy ammunition for Badenoch to embarrass Starmer today, helped by the story of 100 Labour staffers heading off to help the Democrats. But it presents a challenge for the Tories too, especially those who are trying to resist calls for the party to head off in its own populist direction. Badenoch might also run into trouble if (as is all but certain) a Trump-led US starts to divert from British interests, whether in terms of trade, security, or geopolitics. Nailing her colours firmly to the Trump mast on day one helped her make a splash in the Commons. But whether she wants to lend the full support of the Conservative party to the administration when Trump is slapping tariffs on the UK or withdrawing the US from Nato is another matter.
The rest of her questions sought to segue from the US election into British politics. Badenoch flagged defence spending as a key issue and accused the Budget last week of being “a copy-and-paste of Bidenomics”. Unfortunately, she made a basic error, suggesting Rachel Reeves hadn’t mentioned defence in the Budget (there was in fact a whole section on increasing the Ministry of Defence’s Budget next year and “ensuring the UK comfortably exceeds our Nato commitments”), which Starmer gleefully leapt on. Attacking the Prime Minister for scripted comments also backfired, given Badenoch herself was reading from a script. And while her last question on the anger from farmers after the inheritance tax changes in the Budget roused the House in angry brays, it gave Starmer the opportunity to draw a clear line between Labour and Conservative attitudes to public spending, daring the Tories to “tell their constituents they’re against that investment in the future”.
Badenoch didn’t do badly today, and we got a sense of how her attack-dog style could cause Starmer far more headaches than Rishi Sunak ever did. But we also got the outline of how Labour plans to respond: by keeping calm and letting Badenoch dash her fury against an impassive wall, denying her the reaction she is aiming for. Badenoch will have to work harder if she wants to get under Starmer’s skin.
[See also: Why Kamala Harris’s gambit failed]
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