There’s always an odd vibe to PMQs when it’s the warm-up act before a big event. Today’s Westminster Main Character is, of course, Rachel Reeves, who got to her feet to deliver the Spring Statement just as Keir Starmer sat down. Similarly, it is the shadow chancellor Mel Stride out batting for the Tories today when he responds to the Chancellor, not Kemi Badenoch.
But today’s head-to-head between Starmer and Badenoch was still worth watching for what it tells us about the mood. Most notably: the Prime Minister is rattled.
The Conservative leader kicked off with her usual line that the Spring Statement is an “emergency Budget”. But in the spirit of leaving the job of laying into Reeves to Stride, she focused on another member of Starmer’s cabinet: Bridget Phillipson. The Conservatives have homed in on the Education Secretary as a target as the schools bill makes its way through parliament, accusing her of taking an ideological approach to academies and siding with teachers unions over parents and pupils.
Starmer was probably expecting questions along these lines, which did come later, but Badenoch chose instead to start with the issue of banning phones in schools. The government had instructed Labour MPs to vote down a Conservative amendment on the issue to the schools bill last week – Badenoch wanted to know why. “Because it’s completely unnecessary,” came Starmer’s slightly baffled answer, as schools are doing it already. In that case, Badenoch shot back, why had Phillipson launched a review on exactly this policy area?
The Prime Minister didn’t have an answer. Nor did he have answers to Badenoch’s follow-up questions, on discipline in schools and the impact of the increase in employers’ National Insurance on school budgets.
This isn’t unusual. With his courtroom experience, Starmer is an expert at deflecting and neutralising questions he doesn’t want to answer, steering the discussion to more comfortable ground and smoothing over the fact that he often doesn’t answer the question. It’s something that has very obviously been getting under Badenoch’s skin as she has struggled to make an impact at PMQs.
But today, Starmer’s usual rhetorical magic deserted him. He looked confused as he and Badenoch traded contradictory figures on how many schools already ban smartphones. He got lost in a train of thought about his own children attending state schools. His response on the discipline issue was so vague that, for once, Badenoch was able to land her retort “he’s not answering the question about discipline in schools because he doesn’t care about discipline in schools”. And he had no witty comeback to her question “can he guarantee that no teacher will lose their job as a result of his jobs tax?” beyond waffle.
None of this matters, of course – not this week, as the Chancellor tries to cut her way out of a fiscal straitjacket of her own making. But Starmer doesn’t usually get this nervous, and his struggle to respond to what were really very basic questions from Badenoch (and similar to subjects she has asked about before) was telling.
This is not where the Prime Minister wanted to be nine months into this parliament. Stagnating growth, rising borrowing costs, looming tax rises (not today, but almost inevitable in autumn) – not to mention the continued breakdown in public services and a security crisis on the horizon. This may not all be the government’s fault (Donald Trump’s tariffs would throw a spanner into anyone’s economy), but it does expose the risk Starmer and Reeves took when they bet everything on growth, and the further turmoil on the horizon.
The silver lining for the government is that the situation does not appear to be benefiting the Conservatives, in any way. Starmer’s attack line that the opposition “can’t have it both ways” – supporting the investment that extra taxes enable while decrying the taxes themselves – is an effective one. The Tories’ confusion over which of Labour’s changes they would reverse, not to mention the toxic legacy that Starmer can point to every time he is criticised, make it easy to dismiss them.
But that doesn’t alter the restraints hemming in Reeves today. Nor does it make her job more straightforward in the long term. And today, too distracted to fight back properly in his sparring match with Badenoch, Starmer seemed painfully aware of that.
[See more: Rachel Reeves’ balancing act]
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