Badenoch’s PMQs attack ran out of steam

Kemi Badenoch had two chances to attack the government today: first at Prime Minister’s Questions, and then again in response to the Budget. The Tory leader used her first bite of the cherry to try to frame the Budget speech as being part of wider government chaos. The attack started out well, but lost steam towards the end.

Badenoch started by paying tribute to ‘the many farmers who have come to Westminster today to protest the shameful attack on them in last year’s Budget’, before claiming that ‘this has been the most chaotic lead up to a Budget in living memory, with resignations, hostile briefings and leaks galore’. She was interrupted by Lindsay Hoyle scolding some noisy hecklers on the backbenches: the Speaker told them that if they didn’t want the Budget, they should make their mind up now. Badenoch jumped on that, joking that ‘nobody wants this Budget’. Badenoch then asked Starmer to respond to Andy Haldane’s analysis that ‘Labour’s fiscal fandango’ was responsible for the flat lining economy.

Predictably, Starmer responded that ‘we all know the biggest shambles in living history: the Liz Truss Budget!’ He then reminded Badenoch that she had described that Budget as ‘100 per cent right’. It is, though, a pretty low bar if you’re only aiming to do better than Truss.

Starmer then started expressing frustration that he was still being asked about the Budget when it was just 20 minutes away. In fairness to Badenoch, she was actually asking about the chaotic run-up to the Budget. She then widened her focus out to the briefings from Starmer’s allies against Wes Streeting, and asked him to repeat on the floor of the House the claim that none of his advisers had briefed against the cabinet. Starmer replied with exasperation that ‘no one in No. 10 has briefed against cabinet ministers’. This allowed Badenoch to make a decent joke about Morgan McSweeney investigating Morgan McSweeney and concluding that Morgan McSweeney hadn’t done anything wrong. Starmer retorted that while she was ‘scrolling through Twitter’, the government was getting on with addressing the cost of living.

Badenoch then went off on a tangent about Angela Rayner potentially returning to government ‘because he is desperate to shore up his crumbling leadership’. It was supposed to show that Starmer is a weak leader, but it detracted from the focus on the chaos in Downing Street. She tried to pull it back with an ‘in summary’ list of what was going wrong with Labour, presumably for a social media clip, ending with ‘when will he finally accept that the chaos starts and ends with him?’

It was a good go in a graveyard slot which teed Badenoch up for her much harder stint later on.