Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated.
‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming.
She boasted that Starmer had made an embarrassing admission by failing to endorse Reeves’s pledge. Well, sort of. She then quoted the PMI index and asked why business confidence is crashing. Sir Keir ignored this and brought up to Kemi’s loose remark two weeks ago when she endorsed Labour’s investment pledges.
Other backbenchers did her job far better
‘They haven’t got a clue what they’re doing,’ said Sir Keir.
Kemi should have anticipated that rebuttal as well. Then she came to the farming crisis, an astonishing own-goal by Labour, but she only mentioned it in passing before moving to the issue of biscuits. Yes, biscuits. The boss of McVitie’s recently criticised Labour’s financial strategy and Kemi joked that business people are struggling to ‘digest the budget.’ No one laughed.
Continuing this bizarre routine, she described the deputy prime minister as a Ginger Nut which is probably the nicest thing Angela Rayner has ever been called. Is Kemi being paid to find cuddly nicknames for the cabinet? Finally, leaving it very late, she moved to the day’s big crisis, the threatened loss of 1,100 jobs at the Luton van works. Knowing this was a hopeless mission she walked straight into the trap she’d laid for herself. Starmer demolished her with facts.
‘The EV mandates at issue in this case were introduced by the last government,’ he said. ‘She was the business secretary who introduced them.’
Gales of laughter greeted this unremarkable comment. Kemi has achieved the impossible: she makes Starmer look like a cross between James bond and Noel Coward.
Other backbenchers did her job far better. The member for Gordon and Buchan, Harriet Cross, named a recently bereaved farmer, Sarah, whose holding is threatened by the chancellor’s tax-raid. Starmer lifeless eyes swivelled towards her.
‘I’m grateful to her for raising the case’, he said in his thin, anxious voice. ‘Send me the details and I’ll certainly have a look at it.’
Sure he will. Another file for the shredder. Stephen Flynn of the SNP suggested that Starmer might feature in ‘scam awareness’ week on the BBC. He declared that Labour ‘claims to protect pensioners only to pick their pockets.’
Well said. Why didn’t Kemi point that out? It’s not hard to sum up Labour’s objectives.
Send Granny to Narnia.
Put Farmer Giles on suicide watch.
Dump everyone else on benefits.
Labour’s Matt Western accidentally revealed why Starmer wants to freeze pensioners to death this winter. The cash is being sent to Ukraine to fix their energy infrastructure. Western lamented that the war with Russia has left 80 per cent of Ukraine’s grid ‘damaged and destroyed.’ (If Ed Miliband was in charge, the figure would be much higher). Western told us that ‘this important ally’ needs more power generators. OK. And what sort? He didn’t specify but diesel is the fuel of choice for portable generators. Sir Keir duly pledged £370 million ‘to support the energy sector in Ukraine.’ Which is astonishing. Our taxes are being used to heat homes in Ukraine while our pensioners endure hypothermia in their icy bungalows. And Ukrainians get toasty-warm fossil fuels but our citizens have to pay sky high bills for non-twirling windmills and feeble winter sunshine. The message is clear. Britons must emigrate to enjoy the benefits of their own taxes.
Daisy Cooper begged Sir Keir not to renovate any NHS buildings on her patch. She boasted that her local hospital has ‘eliminated 65-week waits’ and ‘met all three cancer standards’ despite the ‘terrible buildings’ which are ‘life expired.’ There is a plan to replace the old hospital but Cooper’s own statistics argue against it. A spanking new building is a distraction, clearly, and our NHS heroes can work miracles irrespective of their physical surroundings. The spirit of the Blitz will save the NHS. Thank you, Ms Cooper.
Comments