Strong, specific questions from the Tory leader soon gave way to a scatter-shot approach.
Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through.
What they sparred about: The economy, stupid. And, for some reason, loads of other things.
Biz woes: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch started strong, ditching the canned lines in favor of some testimony from a specific small business clobbered hard by Labour’s budget tax rise on employers. Starmer, who has staked his reputation on economic growth that is yet to emerge, might try to blame his inheritance or global factors, she charged, but “why should anyone trust a word he says over businesses?”
Cue Starmer doing … exactly that: The PM walked straight into the trap of pinning Britain’s woes on global “volatility,” then reached for his old friend the £22 billion “black hole” which Labour claims the Conservatives left in the public finances. He talked up Labour’s “ironclad” commitment to its fiscal rules amid much chatter about how they’re a straitjacket for embattled Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Kemi kept pressing: Badenoch held her ground — flagging a warning from the British Retail Consortium that shops are going to have to start hiking prices because of Labour’s tax rises. Will Starmer rule out fresh increases?
Black hole, son: The PM wriggled. “We can’t tax our way out of the problems they left us,” was as close as he got to answering that one. And it had been almost two minutes since the last “£22bn black hole” reference, so out that one came again. So far, Badenoch’s bout to lose.
But but but… The Tory leader appeared to be going in on the economy again. Borrowing costs had jumped to a 27-year high, she pointed out. But instead of pressing on this, out came the blunderbuss. Badenoch tried to link the macroeconomic picture to Labour’s controversial deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but didn’t quite stick the landing. Starmer had a ready answer on that one too, pointing out that talks on the deal began under the last government.
Ouch: Badenoch pivoted back to the economy, via a pretty personal attack on Reeves. Labour were, she said, “congratulating themselves for having the first female chancellor” instead of “someone actually qualified to do the job.” That got a cry of “absolutely pathetic” in the House of Commons chamber.
Comeback kid: Badenoch switched back to the bigger issue — is Reeves safe in her job and will there need to be an emergency budget? Starmer said the chancellor would be in place for “many, many years to come,” and insisted there’ll be “one budget.” Bookmark that one.
Let’s try another tack: Five questions in, Badenoch then turned to Tulip Siddiq, who resigned Tuesday night over an ethics probe centered on her links to Bangladesh’s ousted leader. Badenoch raised plenty of eyebrows when she claimed Siddiq was under “criminal investigation” — that’s not the case in the U.K. although she was named in a Bangladesh corruption probe — and then pressed Starmer on whether he’d give U.K. police the support they need to probe “stolen funds.”
Wriggling free: Starmer — billed as Mr Probity in opposition — should have been highly vulnerable here, but he did a decent job of contrasting the Siddiq affair and its timeline — swift referral to the ethics watchdog followed by an exit from the government — with more protracted dramas under the Tories. “Thank god the British public chucked them out,” he said.
Still: We ain’t as dodgy as the last lot is a … less-than-inspiring bumper sticker.
One more heave: Badenoch, clearly deciding she’d not opened up enough lines of attack, then went all guns blazing, deciding to take a pop at the government over payouts related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and then sprinkle in some vague attacks over Labour’s action against child grooming. It was a shotgun in a knife fight, and diluted what might have been a relentless barrage on either the economy or Siddiq.
Helpful backbench intervention of the week: Does the prime minister agree that construction skills training is really really important, Labour’s Gillingham MP Naushabah Khan needed to know, right there and then. Turns out the PM did, and just so happened to have a helpful list of government measures on exactly this to explain from a pre-prepped binder of factoids. Politics is great.
Totally unscientific scores on the doors: Badenoch 6/10. Starmer 7/10. This should’ve been Badenoch’s for the taking and she started with fire in the belly. But a medium-energy Starmer soon wriggled off the hook as a specific list of warnings on the dire state of the economy gave way to a laundry list of general criticisms that struggled to stick. Like Reeves at the despatch box yesterday facing a barrage of, er, Hamlet quotes from her Tory counterpart, the PM got lucky.
