Did Kemi Badenoch win PMQs this week, or did Keir Starmer destroy himself before the session even began? To the Tory leader, it won’t matter – after more than a few occasions where she has managed to miss the open goal right in front of her and has returned the following week armed with the questions she should have asked at the time, today Badenoch got the political football decisively in the back of the net.
Her six questions brought the civil war bubbling away within the Labour Party (as exposed by Ailbhe Rea in this week’s New Statesman cover story) into the chamber. The somewhat bizarre briefings last night from people in and around No 10 about Wes Streeting planning an imminent coup and the health secretary’s subsequent defence were utilised with a flourish Badenoch usually lacks. Of course, there was a joke about waiting lists (the NHS ones Streeting is trying to bring down and the one he himself is on in the jostling to take over from Starmer – geddit?), and another linking unemployment figures with Starmer’s attempt to “cling on to his own job”. But Badenoch’s most successful tactic was to simply use the words of Labour figures against them.
She began with Streeting’s own assessment that “there is a toxic culture in Downing Street that needs to change” – did the Prime Minister agree? Later she referred to Labour’s “feral MPs” – not her words, she was keen to stress, but those of anonymous No 10 officials briefed out to journalists. When Starmer insisted that he had never authorised such attacks against Streeting or anyone else, Badenoch pounced: “He says these attacks aren’t authorised – that means he’s lost control of No 10.”
Starmer’s other defences weren’t much better. He attempted to champion the success Streeting has achieved so far, adding not the two million extra appointments promised, but five million. But like the Health Secretary’s own attempt this morning to focus attention on what he wanted to announce this week (the next stage of scrapping NHS England), it was entirely overshadowed by the internal drama that is No 10’s own making. No matter how many times Starmer reiterated that Streeting was “doing a great job”, the briefing war last night reveals something has gone very badly wrong.
And you could feel it on the Labour benches. When Starmer tried to insist, “This is a united team”, before launching into his usual laundry list of Labour achievements, the House descended into chaos. Lindsey Hoyle seemed to relish the chance to step in, reminding MPs: “If people want to audition for a pantomime, I suggest you go to the Old Vic.” At least in a panto Starmer wouldn’t have to ask where the biggest risk to his authority was coming from – the audience reply would have been deafening.
Unlike her stand-in James Cartlidge last week, Badenoch is at least able to count. She packed her final question with maximum punch, getting in swipes at David Lammy over mistaken prisoner releases and Lisa Nandy over breaking rules on campaign donations, plus some pre-Budget attacks about tax rises and unemployment. She concluded that “in the middle of it, a weak prime minister [is] at war with his cabinet”. Starmer’s usual strategy is to bat this sort of thing away and make Badenoch look unprepared and vaguely ridiculous. But the briefings row makes that impossible. It’s worth considering that, had the drama at No 10 not intensified last night, Badenoch would probably have focused her questions on David Lammy after his debacle of a PMQs performance last week and statement in the Commons yesterday. This is something the PM would actually have been able to answer, given Britain’s dysfunctional prisons system dates back long before Labour took power, offering him 14 years of ammunition. Instead, people in Starmer’s own team seem to have panicked and handed the Tory leader a win today.
The rest of the session wasn’t any more comfortable. Ed Davey used both his questions to ask about the BBC, exposing the government’s balancing act of a position (as performed as undramatically as possible by Lisa Nandy yesterday). “President Trump is trying to destroy our BBC”, the Lib Dem leader warned, demanding a guarantee that the government would not let the White House undermine press freedom or allow Trump to get “a single penny from British licence fee payers”. Starmer responded “Let me be clear” (always a signal that a politician is about to be anything but) and offered the milquetoast assurance “I will always stand up for a strong independent BBC”. Nor would he be drawn on Davey’s suggestion that Robbie Gibb be sacked from the BBC’s board. That’s hardly surprising, but given the strength of anti-Gibb feeling on the Labour benches, it deepens yet another rift between Starmer and his MPs.
Even the usual drive-by attacks on Nigel Farage lacked bite – perhaps because for once the Reform leader was there in person. Farage was invited to disown comments made by one of his councillors that children in care are “downright evil”. He declined, laughing “I’ve only got 30 seconds” and asking about migrant hotels instead. Starmer responded by calling him “utterly spineless”. That might not be the word the PM wants in people’s minds after today’s performance.
[Further reading: Does Keir Starmer realise how much trouble he’s in?]
Content from our partners
Related
