Badenoch attacks Starmer over rape gangs

All politics is local – and no more so than this week. With various voters set to head to the polls across England tomorrow, the different party leaders were hoping to land their last-minute messages at today’s session of Prime Ministers’ Questions. For Kemi Badenoch, the approach seems to have been ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Labour’s stubborn refusal to hold a national inquiry into rape gangs is clearly making their front bench uncomfortable, months after the subject was first raised. So Badenoch chose to spend all six questions on the theme, winning today’s session comfortably.

For the first half of the exchange, it was pretty much a stalemate between the two. Badenoch raised Jess Phillips’s comments on Monday, admitting that there had been a cover-up: ought the government not try to expose this? Starmer responded, slightly stiffly, listing his own record as Director for Public Prosecutions. He noted too, the hundreds of meetings that the Tory leader had as equalities minister; why had she not done more in office to investigate herself?

But halfway through, Badenoch found her form. ‘At least 50 towns were affected by rape gangs’, she told the House, ‘places like Peterborough, Derby, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Rotherham, Rochdale and Preston. Is he dragging his heels on this because he doesn’t want Labour cover-ups exposed?’ Starmer adopted a pose that was less Prime Ministerial and more just simply prim. He pointed against to his time as DPP, prompting Badenoch’s inevitable kicker: ‘He is not Director of Public Prosecutions any more’, she said, demanding that he ‘show leadership’.

As a line of inquiry, it was certainly a more fruitful and less clunking way of tying national issues into local campaigns than the questions offered by various other MPs. The Liberal Democrats were their usual message-disciplined selves, with resident Trump-bashed Ed Davey asking predictable questions on a UK-US trade deal. He was echoed by Clive Jones while Paul Kohler raised the party’s issue of anti-social behaviour on public transport. ‘Will the Prime Minister back the Liberal Democrats’ plan?’, he asked, hopefully (answer: no).

Others pushed their favoured causes to get the vote out tomorrow. Nigel Farage raised Channel crossings and – shock – the 750 migrants currently billeted in Runcorn. Starmer, predictably, claimed that a vote for Reform is a ‘vote to charge for the NHS [and] a vote for a pro-Putin party’. Labour newbies preferred healthcare – though Dan Tomlinson took the shamelessness award for raising a Reform-Tory pact. ‘That hasn’t anything to do with the Prime Minister!’, exclaimed Lindsay Hoyle, dismissing Starmer’s need to answer.

As with most PMQs before a big event, it was not one for the ages – but Badenoch’s peppy performance will cheer the Tories ahead of a long night tomorrow.