There was a surreal mixture of grim solemnity and festive light-heartedness at PMQs today, beginning with a reminder of the hostages taken by Hamas – with the mother of one of them, the British-Israeli Emily Damari, present in the gallery – and including a mention of a Welsh Labour MP’s charity Christmas single (not to be confused with Ed Davey’s rival Christmas single, also raising money for charity).
Striking a tone somewhere between the two, Kemi Badenoch led on the latest Labour scandal: the revelations that Labour MP Louise Haigh had pleaded guilty to a fraud offence a decade ago, and that Keir Starmer had known about it when he appointed her to be his transport secretary. Badenoch wanted to know what the Prime Minister had been thinking, and why he had suddenly changed his mind last week and accepted Haigh’s prompt resignation as soon as the scandal broke.
This is an awkward one for Starmer. Haigh’s conviction was spent before she even became an MP, and the details that have been released suggest the incident was an honest mistake. The speed with which the PM dropped her, however, hints that maybe there is more to this story. Either way, Starmer wasn’t going to be drawn on it today. Badenoch tried three times to goad him, with a groan-worthy joke about Haigh’s pay deal for train drivers being “a fraud for the British people”; three times, Starmer stonewalled her. She got a bit of a laugh for her line that “the country needs conviction politicians, not politicians with convictions”, but apparently didn’t predict the obvious comeback: a reminder from Starmer that two of her own predecessors had convictions for Covid rule breaches. (Westminster will now descend into an internal row on whether fixed penalty notices count as “convictions” – let no one ever suggest we don’t want to have fun.)
The second half turned into a wrangle over new OECD data, allowing Badenoch to return to her weekly theme of Labour ruining the economy. Would Starmer repeat that one of his five missions is for the UK to have the highest sustained growth in the G7? Starmer is expected to drop that specific pledge in his big “Plan for Change” speech tomorrow, focusing instead on living standards. Helpfully the OECD has today suggested the UK is on target to have the highest growth in the next two years, which the PM pointed out, but he wouldn’t repeat the pledge. Badenoch argued he couldn’t be trusted, and Starmer accused the Tories of breaking the economy. It was all very predictable.
Starmer’s performance was not particularly strong, but Badenoch should be kicking herself for falling into easily foreseeable traps. As well as the line about convictions, she was open to Starmer’s attacks over the Tories’ record on immigration: not just the extraordinary numbers released last week (net immigration was at a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023), but her personal role in arguing for more visas when she was business secretary. Starmer got in a dig about her record on farmers too, suggesting the farming community Badenoch has been cosying up to since Labour’s inheritance-tax changes wasn’t so happy with her when she was signing trade deals that ignored its interests. She didn’t have an answer to that either. It is becoming increasingly obvious at PMQs that issues which would normally be perfect ammunition for the Conservatives to attack the government can be used against them. Badenoch needs to find a way to work around such landmines before her party begins to wonder if someone without her high-profile government experience might be less of a liability.
There were two other things to note from today’s session. First, the government is in trouble in Scotland, where the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance for most pensioners has proved so contentious that Scottish Labour has committed to reinstating it. The SNP had fun with that one today. Holyrood elections aren’t until 2026 but next year will be dominated by their build-up. Expect much more of this.
Second, Ed Davey brought up yesterday’s vote on a Lib Dem bill calling for proportional representation, which passed by 137 to 135. It won’t go anywhere, but it’s the first time Westminster has shown any sign at all of backing electoral reform. Davey wanted to know if the Prime Minister would make time for the bill to be considered; unsurprisingly, Starmer declined, and reminded Davey that “he didn’t do too badly under the system as it is”. As a reminder, the Lib Dems won 72 MPs in July, up from 11 in 2019, with a similar share of the vote. The same cannot be said of Reform: if you mapped vote share directly on to MPs (which is a misleading but tempting thing to do), you could argue they deserve 91 MPs, rather than the five they have. Are we going to be seeing a lot more noise about electoral reform this parliament, as Davey and Nigel Farage make common cause? Yes. Yes we are.
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