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.
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