Keir Starmer was utterly brutal at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, though towards his own Chancellor, rather than the opposition. He refused to say, when invited by Kemi Badenoch, that Rachel Reeves would be in position until the end of the parliament. Behind him, Reeves looked utterly miserable, to the point that Badenoch highlighted it in one of her questions. The Chancellor either had a particularly badly-timed case of hay fever, or was struggling emotionally during the session, with what appeared to be a tear rolling out of her eye when Starmer was only partially defending her.
Reeves was nodding and agreeing with him, but looked devastated at the same time
The focus on Reeves came about because Badenoch naturally attacked Labour on last night’s welfare bill shambles. The Leader of the Opposition was preceded by very loyal Labour backbencher Paul Waugh praising the government’s free school meals policy, and she decided to mock the former journalist as ‘toady of the week’ before getting stuck into Starmer and his Chancellor. She asked him how much the welfare bill would save. It gave the Prime Minister a chance to defend what the legislation was doing, arguing it was ‘consistent with the principles I set out’.
Badenoch was rather joyful in response to this, beaming as she said she didn’t believe the Prime Minister ‘actually watched what happened in the House yesterday: his bill was completely gutted!’ She argued he hadn’t answered the question ‘because he knows it doesn’t save any money: it’s going to cost millions’. She added that this was ‘the first Prime Minister in history to propose a bill to save money who ended up with a bill which cost money’. She then asked how many people the legislation would get into work.
Starmer replied rather feebly that ‘we’ve already started changing the job centres’, before attacking the Tories. This laid the bait for Badenoch to start defending the Tories on welfare, rather than carrying on with her attacks on Labour. She returned, in a very long question, to complaining about the rising number of claimants for sickness benefits, telling the Chamber that Starmer could not control his own party. She pointed at various Labour MPs, shouting ‘you signed the amendment!’
The pair had a ding-dong over a couple of questions about Starmer’s weakness and whether Reeves would put up taxes this autumn to pay for the welfare bill. Badenoch demanded that he rule out putting up taxes, which the Prime Minister refused to do. Then came the killer question from the Tory leader:
‘She [Rachel Reeves] is pointing at me. She looks absolutely miserable. Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the Chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence. In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?’
Starmer’s response appeared to yank all the wind out of Reeves’s sails. He didn’t guarantee her job: ‘She [Badenoch] certainly won’t! I have to say, I’m always cheered up when she asks me questions or responds to a statement because she always make a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are.’
Reeves was nodding and agreeing with him, but looked devastated at the same time. Badenoch offered the least welcome sympathy imaginable in her next question, saying: ‘How awful for the Chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.’
Starmer did not come back with that guarantee in his final answer. All he said was that the Chancellor had led on all the key issues and ‘we are grateful to her for it’, and that he was proud of his first year in government. But he clearly hasn’t enjoyed it – and Reeves even less so.
Comments