Neither Starmer nor Badenoch got what they wanted from PMQs

Keir Starmer wanted to spend Prime Minister’s Questions talking about the UK’s trade deal with India, while Kemi Badenoch – and later SNP leader Stephen Flynn – wanted to attack the government’s energy and welfare policies. Neither side really succeeded in its aims: Starmer ended up shoehorning the trade deal into random answers, while Badenoch didn’t exactly get the prime minister on the ropes. But the session did show how many bruises Labour has available for its critics to punch.

The Tory leader led on whether Starmer accepted that his government was wrong to have removed the winter fuel payment. He insisted that Labour had to fix the ‘black hole’ in the economy, and that it was committed to the triple lock on pensions. He also listed the support that the government was offering to struggling pensioners, and added that ‘because of the work we have done, we are a country that countries like India want to do business with’ – just to remind Badenoch what he wanted to spend the session chatting about.

Badenoch retorted that ‘the only black hole is the one the prime minister is digging’, adding that ‘he has refused to listen to me on this: will he at least listen to his own party?’ Starmer’s own MPs are calling for a change of tack on the winter fuel payment. The prime minister argued that ‘no other party in this house is prepared to say how they would put the finances straight.’ In her next question, the leader of the opposition moved onto why Labour had broken its promises to bring energy bills down by £300, which allowed Starmer to start caricaturing her as what he called a ‘climate defeatist’. His attack on her scepticism about net zero would have had more force had Badenoch not then been able to quote Tony Blair’s concerns about the government’s approach back at him, underlining why the former prime minister’s intervention had left so many around Starmer spitting with rage.

Ed Davey appeared to have sent a hologram of himself talking at previous PMQs to today’s session, replaying from a previous week first a question about the government being too slow on NHS and social care reform, and second a much-repeated criticism of the government for not standing up to Trump. Stephen Flynn had a characteristically effective line about job losses in his constituency in Aberdeen, with the SNP Westminster leader saying they had caused by Labour energy policies, and inviting ‘the prime minister to come to Aberdeen and explain to my constituency’s why he is prepared to move heaven and earth to save jobs in Scunthorpe’, but not do the same for jobs in Scotland. Starmer claimed in response that neither the Tories nor the SNP had done anything to save North Sea jobs when they were in power. But the attack from both sides of political divide underlined what a difficult position Labour has ended up in on energy policy.

Towards the end of the session, former political journalist Torcuil Crichton asked about job cuts to the Press Association’s coverage of the Commons. Starmer gave an odd response which suggested he had already tuned out. He spent some time praising the bravery of foreign journalists and recalling how many events he had been to where reporters paid tribute to their colleagues killed doing their jobs. It inadvertently suggested that he thought lobby journalists are also in some way risking their lives by reporting on our own parliament, when the main risks to our health tend to be from the amount of wine consumed in the bars.