Once again, the key takeaway from today’s Prime Minister’s Questions is what Keir Starmer didn’t say, rather than what he did. Kemi Badenoch wanted to use the session to tee up the Budget, or more specifically to tee up the tax rises that Labour is going to have to announce in that fiscal event. And Starmer wanted to use his answers to avoid the questions, while also trumpeting what he saw as Labour’s achievements on the economy.
For once in a good long while, the Tories were getting their share of attacks from the Prime Minister too
Badenoch was ready for Starmer dodging the question of whether he still stands by his promise not to put up income tax, national insurance or VAT. When he replied with a long-winded list of the things that were going well in the economy, she came back with: ‘Well, well, well, what a fascinating answer. It is not the same answer that I received when I asked exactly the same question word for word on July 9? Then, the Prime Minister replied with just one word, ‘yes’, and then he sat down with a smug grin on his face. What’s changed in the past four months?’
Starmer replied that no prime minister or chancellor sets out their budget in advance, adding that the Tories ‘did even more damage to the economy than previously thought’. He said: ‘Now, we will turn that around…they broke the economy, we’re fixing it.’
He returned to that claim about ‘more damage’ in his next answer, saying that the productivity review figures showed the ‘true extent of the damage they did’. That was an attempt to deal with Badenoch’s question about stamp duty and whether he would follow her idea, announced at her party’s conference, about scrapping it. Similarly on welfare spending, which she suggested Labour could work with the Tories to cut, Starmer went back to talking about why the Conservatives couldn’t be trusted and the extent of the damage they had wrought on the economy.
The only interesting thing about these exchanges, other than Starmer refusing to repeat his manifesto pledges on taxation, was that the Prime Minister was bothering to attack the Tories at all, given he has been more interested in Reform of late. He did, though, attack Nigel Farage’s party later, accusing it of being ‘Putin-friendly’. But for once in a good long while, the Tories were getting their share of attacks from the Prime Minister too, if only because it saved him from having to talk about his own plans.
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