Some weeks, the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition positively fizz. Some weeks they are so flat they are barely worth commenting on. Today’s PMQs was the latter. There were several tributes to David Amess, the Conservative MP murdered in 2021 for whom a memorial plaque hangs in the House of Commons, and whose family Keir Starmer is meeting later today. Besides that, this really wasn’t the most memorable session.
Kemi Badenoch seemed to be making progress last week, taking the high ground in a way that reflected the gravity of the global landscape. This week, her performance can best be described as irrelevant. The strategy attempted a few times this year of honing in on a single policy area with a laser-focused line of inquiry in the hope of catching Starmer out was discarded. Instead, Badenoch asked a hodge-podge of questions without a clear thread beyond the vague theme of “the economy”. She touched on job losses, nursery fees, farmers and council tax rises – and failed to land any blows on the PM with any of them.
To be fair to the Tory leader, at least this week she wasn’t caught out by borrowing misleading stories from the front pages of right-leaning newspapers. You could sort of see what she was trying to do: chip away at Labour’s credibility on the economy, maintain pressure on the government over the impact of the Budget in October, and lay the groundwork for the Conservatives’ response when Rachel Reeves delivers her Spring Statement in two weeks’ time.
Badenoch several times referred to the upcoming statement as an “emergency Budget” (Reeves has stressed it will be nothing of the kind – but we know the fiscal straitjacket the Chancellor finds herself in is even worse than expected). She also returned to a popular Tory attack line that the combination of the tax rises in the Budget and Labour’s employment rights legislation is leading to job losses. Expect the Conservatives to keep a close eye on the employment figures and pin any bad news squarely on Labour’s policies.
The trouble with this approach is that, to put it bluntly, the Tories are in no position to lecture anyone on the economy. Doing so just enables Starmer to return to his favourite theme: the other side destroyed everything, the inheritance was shocking, now Labour has to fix what it broke. You could almost feel the Prime Minister’s glee when Badenoch tried to argue that Labour “trashed the economy”. That phrase is still closely associated with Liz Truss – whom Badenoch, for some reason, seems reluctant to disown. It enabled Starmer to remind the House about “a mini-Budget that made us the laughing stock of the world, and they want to give lecture to us – no thank you very much”.
Badenoch isn’t wrong that the government faces challenges (and unpopularity) over the economy. But she is very much mistaken if she thinks anyone is willing to hear about it from the Tories for the foreseeable future.
Her other error was, once again, lack of preparation. Or, rather, a failure to think that perhaps Starmer may have prepared himself. Her foray into rising council tax was stopped dead when the PM was able to hit back that “the Tories put up council tax every year for 12 years” and reel off a list of Conservative-led councils that had requested bigger increases. If Badenoch thought it was worth the risk of being called out just to use her prepared line on councils (“People vote Labour and all they get is trash, just like what he’s saying at the despatch box”), she misjudged it. It came across as scripted and heavy-handed. No points there.
It didn’t help her that, after she sat down, Ed Davey stood up to give a masterclass in a different style of opposition. The Lib Dem leader continued his unofficial mission to be, effectively, Starmer’s conscience. He asked first about the rumoured cuts to disability benefits (the big story of the week – and something Badenoch did not touch on once), pressing the PM to confirm that benefits for people who simply couldn’t work would not be cut. Starmer could not confirm, shoehorning in an answer about the inheritance left by the Tories. Care and support provided to disabled people is a topic Davey has real authority on, and you could sense the discomfort on the Labour benches over Starmer’s answer.
Then Davey turned to his other favourite topic: Donald Trump. “We on these benches must be more robust with President Trump… like the Canadians,” he argued. Would the Prime Minister fly out to Canada to demonstrate the UK’s solidarity with a fellow Commonwealth nation facing frankly bizarre intimidation from its increasingly unpredictable southern neighbour? Starmer agreed that Canada was an important ally, then answered the tariffs bit of the question with his usual line about a “pragmatic approach”. Once again, it felt as though Davey was able to channel a degree of gravitas and grown-up critique that Badenoch was not.
Finally, the prize for the most vicious attack on the Prime Minister goes not to anyone on the Tory benches, but to Zarah Sultana, who was elected as a Labour MP in 2019 but lost the whip this summer for rebelling over the government’s position on the two-child benefit cap. Her question today pointedly reminded Starmer of his comments in October 2023 on Israel’s “right” to restrict electricity and water supplies to Gaza. Starmer replied that he was “really appalled by Israel blocking aid when it is needed”. Earlier this year some of the child-benefit rebels had the whip restored. Sultana was not among them. The tone and wording of her intervention today suggests she might not be interested in regaining the Labour whip any time soon.
[See more: Why Britain isn’t working]
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