There was no end-of-term feel in the Commons today, despite it being the last PMQs before the Easter recess. As with last week’s prelude to the Spring Statement, the clash between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch was not the main political event of the day. That will come at 9pm UK time, when Donald Trump unveils his “Liberation Day” tariffs and potentially plunges the global economy into trade war and downturn.
The shadow of the Trump tariffs hung over the House, with the Prime Minister kicking off by reiterating the Downing Street line that “a trade war is in nobody’s interest” and that the government was “prepared for all eventualities and has ruled nothing out”.
As is becoming a bit of a theme, the head-to-head between the PM and the leader of the opposition was something of an anti-climax. Badenoch tried yet again to get her attacks on the government’s economic performance to stick, focusing on what she has branded Labour’s “jobs tax”, referring to the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs).
Insert your own joke about trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results. We’d seen all this before – most recently yesterday, when Badenoch and her shadow chancellor Mel Stride held an entire press conference on the subject, convening journalists at Conservative Campaign Headquarters so the Tory leader could deliver a five-minute tirade about how it was causing businesses to freeze hiring and even cut jobs. When the very first journalist question asked what she would do instead, given Badenoch is in favour of the extra investment in the NHS which is funded by the tax increase. Would she reverse the employers’ NIC rise, and if so, what would she tax or cut instead? Badenoch did not have an answer.
And she had no answer to Starmer today when he made the same point – as he does every time she uses this line of attack. It seems baffling that, in the 24 hours since the “jobs tax” press conference, it did not occur to Badenoch or anyone on her team to work out a response to this very obvious challenge.
If Starmer seemed jittery last week with Spring Statement nerves, today he was back to having fun with his opponent. When Badenoch tried to put a price tag on the NIC rise, saying it would cost families £3,500, he called it a “fantasy figure” that was “about as much use as Liz Truss’s economic planning”. Starmer loves any excuse to bring up Truss – the predecessor Badenoch, strangely, seems most reluctant to distance herself from – and the Tory leader’s decision to keep hammering away at the economy line continues to hand him this opportunity.
You can see Badenoch is trying to exploit the government’s economic woes and the mounting public dissatisfaction. She referred to “Awful April” – the suite of bill increases that hit on Tuesday, turbocharging the cost-of-living crisis – and snapped at Starmer “I don’t agree with making people poorer”.
But the Conservatives’ recent legacy is just too toxic for any arguments about economic credibility to land. And there are too many landmines in both Badenoch’s own record and that of her party for it to be worth risking. Her attempts to wound Labour over council tax rises, for example, were floored by Starmer reeling off a list of Conservative councils which have requested increases and reminding the House that Badenoch was once “minister for council tax” (a reference to her time in charge of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government). These sorts of traps should be obvious to spot, but she keeps walking into them.
The same thing happened with Badenoch’s final question on the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the car industry. Having up until that point avoided the headline issue of the day, at the last minute she tried to highlight the government’s failure to carve out exemptions from the looming US trade war. Did she really not anticipate Starmer’s retort that “she’s the trade secretary who failed to get a trade deal with the US”?
And, more importantly, what is the current Tory policy on responding to Trump’s protectionism? The Conservatives like to talk about standing up for British interests and Badenoch was clear in her condemnation of tariffs in yesterday’s press conference. But she also made a point of refraining from criticising the Trump administration, and seemed sympathetic to the White House’s view that free speech in the UK was “at risk” (an issue which could be getting in the way of negotiations over a trade deal). It is difficult for Badenoch to press Starmer on the major news item when her own position is so unclear.
There was, unsurprisingly, no such ambiguity from Ed Davey. The Lib Dem leader called on Starmer to lead an “economic coalition of the willing, against Trump’s tariffs, for free trade” – echoing the language the Prime Minister has used about defence and security and continuing his party’s positioning as parliament’s main anti-Trump force.
The Prime Minister’s reply – “Every week he tries to tempt me to make what I think is a false choice” – was interesting on several levels. First, it is a candid acknowledgement of the pressure Davey’s weekly interventions are putting on the government to toughen up its response to the US (pressure that is more acute than anything Badenoch manages). And it also, perhaps, serves as a reminder that there are many MPs on Labour’s benches who agree with Davey and would like to see Starmer stand up more to Trump, Love Actually style, in spite of the economic risks. A pointed question about the UK potentially dropping its digital service tax on US tech giants from Claire Hanna of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Labour’s sister party in Northern Ireland, who urged the PM not to “pander” to Trump’s “bullying”, reveals the same tension.
Starmer’s reference to a “false choice” between strong relations with the US and closer ties with Europe was as much a message to his own MPs as to Davey. We’ll find out when the tariff blow lands tonight just how far the government’s line can hold.
[See more: Don’t blame the OBR for Britain’s economic woes]
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