“This is the end of my political journey”, Keir Starmer announced as he made the closing remarks of his last Prime Minister’s Questions, two years and one week after he led Labour to its greatest victory in a generation. A packed chamber rose to its feet and applauded (the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, admonished them for doing so; MPs are supposed to wave their papers and cheer). On the benches behind the speaker, Starmer’s political team were all in tears, probably at the departure of a decent but flawed prime minister, but possibly also because they had subjected to half an hour of terrible, repetitive jokes.
Before Starmer’s last PMQs began, questions hung unspoke in the air. Would Andy Burnham – already being referred to in the chamber as “the incoming prime minister” – attend? (No: the member for Makerfield was spotted this morning in Portcullis House, wearing a polo shirt; clearly he didn’t want to turn Starmer’s last PMQs into his first.) Who would sit where? Starmer loyalists such as Steve Reed could be seen trying to occupy a safe distance from the departing PM, at the far end of the front bench. As the chamber filled up, Meg Hillier – leader of the welfare rebellion that sealed Starmer’s fate – seemed to have arrived respectfully late. Al Carns loomed in a doorway; Ed Miliband stood in the huddle behind the Speaker’s chair, holding two phones.
But the real question was for Kemi Badenoch: could she prepare anything sufficiently crass and vindictive to see Starmer off in her trademark style? This was not only a moral challenge, but a technical one: she had already called his party “paedo defenders”, his education secretary a “spiteful class warrior” and a “Gestapo officer”. Insults, like swearwords, lose their power when overused. What could the Leader of the Opposition say that would be unpleasant enough to make this a genuine Kemi moment? Was she going to call the PM a nonce? Was she going to throw a bucket of scalding vomit at him across the despatch box, while setting fire to a picture of his parents?
Or – and this was actually a more uncomfortable prospect – was she going to try to be nice?
Badenoch began with a tribute to Anne Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister and Reform spokesperson who was murdered last week. This was obviously a moment for gravitas and respect, and Badenoch spoke warmly of Widdecome as someone with “a deep humanity and decency” before quoting, to Starmer, Widdecombe’s observation that “there is life after politics”.
Badenoch then reflected on her desire to “get the tone right” in Starmer’s final PMQs, which set the chamber braying. Here it comes! Was she going to insult the PM’s wife? No: she spoke of his decency, his commitment. She made no jokes at Starmer’s expense, deploying instead a damp quip about the football and an obvious line about Count Binface. She addressed the Labour benches with “as much goodwill as I can muster”. She actually used the word “lovely”.
What was going on? Had someone given her Ed Davey’s notes? This was most unsettling. Kemi Badenoch being nice is like an XL Bully wagging its tail at you: it can act like a spaniel, but it would obviously still bite your arm off at a moment’s notice.
A departing prime minister is usually given a fairly nice time in their final PMQs, and this was no exception, but the occasion was marked by the appalling repetition of the jokes. Starting with Starmer’s declaration that he had “an important appointment with the television at eight o’clock”, the woeful attempts at footy banter were relentless. The House groaned at mention after mention of red cards and dodgy refs and the importance of England winning the world cup. Richard Tice’s one contribution could basically be summed up as “football, ha ha”.
The only thing more repetitious were the jokes about Count Binface. Ed Davey – who also used the session to pitch openly for a spot on Strictly Come Dancing – had a line about Nigel Farage being the real “joke candidate” in the Clacton by-election that has been used hundreds of times already, including by Davey himself. Starmer responded with the much more original line that the Lib Dem is “the honourable member for Chessington World of Adventures”. He also managed the only funny Binface joke, in response to the Conservative-to-Reform defector Danny Kruger, in which he observed that his party “believe in recycling politicians”.
As always there were more questions than could be asked: most notably Jeremy Corbyn could be seen fuming and muttering at Starmer’s words about Labour’s defeat in 2019 and the anti-Semitism he had “ripped out” from his party. Corbyn did not join the standing ovation at the end.
Apart from that, this was a very congenial and arguably rather saccharine farewell. It lacked the elegaic qualtiy of David Cameron’s wistful sign-off (“I was the future, once”) or a sense of historical importance. Starmer used many of his answers as a pretext to pay tribute to people in the gallery whom his policies had helped, and concluded by telling his family he loved them. It summed up his time in power: a decent man, a loving husband and father, but ultimately not a prime minister.
[Further reading: After Keir Starmer]
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Subscribe here to commentFive paragraphs and 316 words on Ms Badenoch’s performance, with two-thirds devoted to describing how awful she was — or could have been. Robust analysis indeed.
Then again, ‘if one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.”’
What does it say about the rest of the piece, I wonder…