If Kemi Badenoch has a plan, she’s keeping it hidden. At PMQs she used her scattergun approach to complain about unemployment, farming, winter fuel payments, council tax, increases in NI, business closures, food-aid for underfed kids and the murder of David Amess. Eventually, she reached the chancellor’s awkward ‘spring statement’ which would have made a much better starting point. There was no shape to her performance, no dramatic climax, no electrifying revelation to dominate the afternoon news. And she’s low on energy. Does she even need six questions? She should sell half of them to the SNP who are adept at concealing illicit financial deals from the auditors.
Her best moment came when she mentioned the stinking dunes of refuse gathering in Labour-run Birmingham.
‘People vote Labour and all they get is trash – just like he’s saying over the despatch box.’
This looked like an improvised quip. And she derided Sir Keir’s policy of placing ‘breakfast clubs’ in schools to feed pupils who arrive in the classroom with empty bellies. Labour has cannily opened two of these soup-kitchens in Kemi’s constituency to create an atmosphere of poverty and failure. She was quick to decry the gimmick as ‘60p breakfast clubs.’ A fair point. Treating north Essex as a famine zone is unlikely to boost children’s confidence in Britain’s future. But Sir Keir slapped her down for daring to criticise his saintly programme.
Without any leadership from Kemi, Sir Keir was allowed to dominate. He was briefly cornered by a Tory backbencher, Andrew Snowden, who raised a worrying issue that Kemi had overlooked. Snowden complained about new sentencing guidelines that promise harsher punishments for defendants belonging to a religious or ethnic majority. He urged Sir Keir to ‘stop this guidance in its tracks … and prove he hasn’t been Two-Tier Keir all along.’
Sir Keir blandly replied that the guidelines were cooked up by the Tories.
‘The proposal was drafted in 2024 and the last government was consulted. They said they “welcomed the proposals.”’
Given an easy ride by the opposition, Sir Keir had more trouble from his own party. The hard left is staging a comeback.
Zarah Sultana, who always sounds as if she’s calling an ambulance, accused Sir Keir of failing to unblock Israeli deliveries of aid to Gaza. Blithely accusing Israel of the worst crimes imaginable, she called these temporary delays, ‘further evidence of genocide.’ Sir Keir slyly agreed while disagreeing. He said that Israel ‘risks breaking humanitarian law’ but he went no further.
He was then attacked by Richard Burgon who looks like a badly-drawn superhero. Burgon always poses as the champion of the poor, the distressed and the physically broken. But today he scared the living daylights out of them. Labour’s spin-machine has warned that ‘tough choices’ are being considered over disability benefits. Burgon translated this into plain English.
‘Tough choices mean easy choices. Making the poor and vulnerable pay,’ he warned. Scary stuff! Sir Keir rushed to reassure everyone that Burgon was indulging in empty sloganeering. He gave his word that Labour would ‘support those who want to be supported’ into work. Burgon had offered the house a specific solution to the soaring benefits bill. He wants to seize more assets from ‘the very wealthiest.’
Sir Keir rebuffed Burgon by claiming to have implemented this policy already. He boasted that his government began by clobbering the non-doms and went on to hike taxes on private jets. His next challenge is to ‘kick-start growth’ he said. He forgot to mention that most of the private jets are full of billionaires heading into permanent exile.
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