Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Keir Starmer performed very well at Prime Minister’s Questions: both fluffed their lines early on. Badenoch managed to suggest the Budget had already happened, while Starmer got lost during an attack on Tory economic policy. But while Badenoch was back to the kind of poor delivery that had previously upset so many of her Conservative colleagues, Starmer still came off worse.
Neither emerged well, but Badenoch’s poor performance matters far less given she is in opposition
Badenoch wanted to ridicule the way Labour is handling the Budget, telling the Chamber: ‘Can the Prime Minister tell us why his government is the first government in history to float increasing income tax rates, only to U-turn on it all after the actual Budget?’
Starmer rose, chuckling: ‘I’ll inform her the Budget is actually next week, rather than after the Budget. She’s only got one week to go. But I can tell her it will be a Labour Budget, Mr Speaker, with Labour values. That means we will concentrate on cutting NHS waiting lists, cutting debt and cutting the cost of living.’ He then listed some signs of improvement in the economy.
Badenoch tried to deal with her error in her next question, saying: ‘He says the Budget is next week, but we read all about it in the papers. This is the first Budget to unravel before it’s even been delivered!’ She claimed that the Chancellor’s ‘cluelessness is damaging the economy now’ and demanded that Starmer rule out freezing income tax thresholds.
Starmer did not take that opportunity, saying the government would protect the NHS and public services and not ‘inflict austerity on the country’ or ‘inflict a borrowing spree like Liz Truss did’. He then ended up having to read his notes more closely to pronounce on Badenoch’s ‘golden economic rule’, which he said showed ‘they haven’t listened and they haven’t learned’.
Badenoch popped up again to say ‘it is quite clear that they are going to freeze thresholds’. She quoted Reeves promising not to break manifesto promises. Starmer’s response was that ‘every week she comes along and speculates and distorts’. This prompted theatrical laughter from the Tory benches. But he still wasn’t dealing with the question about frozen thresholds.
‘He talks about speculation,’ retorted Badenoch. ‘The only people who’ve been speculating are his government, every single day for the last three months!’ She returned to the point about thresholds, saying Rachel Reeves had promised on the floor of the Commons not to break the manifesto promises about freezing them. Back again came Starmer with an unrelated answer and an attack on the Conservative economic record, including quoting Badenoch saying Liz Truss had got the mini-Budget ‘100 per cent right’. Badenoch repeated the Reeves quote, saying: ‘I have come to the conclusion that extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people.’ In this question and the next, she quoted heads of business who were disappointed with the Labour government, including what she claimed was an ‘unprintable’ verdict on Starmer and his Energy Secretary from energy executives. She then accused Reeves of calling a ‘ridiculous’ press conference and then U-turning on her U-turn over income tax rises, saying the country deserved better than ‘government by guesswork’. Starmer produced his usual line about Labour being the party that was renewing the country.
Neither emerged well, but Badenoch’s poor performance matters far less given she is in opposition. Starmer will, though, have been comforted that he did not face loud grumbles from Labour backbenchers about his party’s immigration proposals, and that he had a chance to raise the allegations about Nigel Farage’s behaviour as a schoolboy. It was notable that in his payoff to Badenoch, Starmer had talked about ‘austerity 2.0 with Reform and the Tories’: for him, the threat from Farage’s party is still more serious than the questions across the Chamber from Badenoch each week.
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