Pmqs

Kemi Badenoch’s good form at Prime Minister’s Questions continues. The Tory leader visibly enjoyed herself again today as she feasted on Labour’s misfortune, and she did a good job in covering the breadth of problems in the government. She used her six questions to ask about different departments and how they were faring: an approach that can often risk diluting the overall attack. But today, Badenoch had an overarching theme to those questions, which was that the Prime Minister and his colleagues are failing to meet their own promises. The way she illustrated that argument was very effective. Badenoch opened by quoting Labour MPs criticising Starmer, something that is becoming

Kemi Badenoch had plenty to work with at Prime Minister’s Questions today. She opened with the departure of the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, as it allowed her to suggest that Starmer was dodging taking responsibility himself. She asked: ‘Does the prime minister believe that when an organisation descends into total shambles, the person at the top should resign?’ Starmer replied that he was ‘very proud to lead this party at the budget last week’, listing the positive announcements on the NHS, energy bills and so on, before adding: ‘We’re fixing the mess that they left, and I’m very proud to be doing so’.  Badenoch then made her

Who won PMQs this week? Not Kemi Badenoch, nor Keir Starmer for that matter. In fact, the real winner wasn’t in the chamber at all: Wes Streeting emerged from the session in even better shape than he was before Downing Street decided to launch an extraordinary briefing round against him. The jokes about the instability at the top of the government began even before the exchange between the leader of the ppposition and the Prime Minister. When Starmer gave his conventional first answer, that he had been having ‘meetings with ministerial colleagues and others’ this morning, there were loud guffaws from the benches opposite. Then Tory Lincoln Jopp offered Starmer

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

Keir Starmer was well aware that Kemi Badenoch would probably use Prime Minister’s Questions today to run a victory lap following the Supreme Court judgement on the definition of a woman. She has long been clear about the need to make biological sex the basis of such a definition, while Starmer has been on a journey over the matter. The Prime Minster came armed with plenty of defences and deflections, but still struggled.  In response to Badenoch’s first question, which was whether Starmer would accept he was wrong, he said ‘let me clear’, which is always a sign that someone is about to obfuscate. The Prime Minister continued: ‘I welcome

Kemi Badenoch made some changes to her strategy at Prime Minister’s Questions today and had a much better time of it. She stuck to one topic, rather than performing handbrake turns from one matter to another, and she didn’t accuse Keir Starmer of not answering the question. Instead, she claimed the Prime Minister was ‘out of touch’ and had no idea ‘what is happening out there’. The Tory leader’s focus was on the national insurance increase, which comes into effect next month. She asked first about job losses caused by the rise in employers’ contributions, and responded curtly that Starmer ‘needs to get out more’ when he argued that Labour

Keir Starmer has not seemed in control of the grooming gangs story since it broke, but at Prime Minister’s Questions, he had a rare period of command. This was largely because he is more adept at answering questions than Kemi Badenoch currently is at asking them, and also because the Conservative line on this matter is muddled. The Prime Minister was able to dismiss Badenoch’s focus on grooming gangs as a recent interest, telling the Chamber: Her recently acquired view that it’s a scandal, having spent a lot of time on social media over Christmas, not once in eight years did she stand here and say what she’s just said.

Labour thinks it can win on immigration. Their new strategy was road-tested today at PMQs as backbencher Olivia Bailey opened the session saluting Keir Starmer’s gang-busting policies. ‘Internationalist co-operation, shared intelligence and joint law enforcement,’ said Bailey, ‘are the best way to end the vile people-smuggling trade.’   Starmer rose to agree with his stooge. ‘The broken immigration system’ of the Tories is being fixed, he said, and 9,400 people ‘who have no right to be here’ are being rounded up and sent packing. ‘We got the flights off the ground,’ he boasted. This blew Kemi Badenoch off course. She wanted to talk about Louise Haigh, the ex-transport minister.  ‘He

Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated. ‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming. She boasted that Starmer had made an

Angela Rayner was so keen to get out of the traps with her criticism of the last Conservative government at today’s deputy prime minister’s questions that she almost forgot to welcome her new sparring partner. Alex Burghart is not yet a household name: in fact, he isn’t even Rayner’s direct counterpart, as Kemi Badenoch hasn’t yet named a deputy. He had a reasonable session, and even made a stab at doing something no-one else has yet managed, which is to define ‘Starmerism’. Rayner enjoyed herself, as ever, while Rachel Reeves, sitting next to her on the government benches, had the most uncomfortable session. Perhaps Burghart’s attack might have been more

When Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, he and Keir Starmer had some of the most repetitive and uninformative sessions at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today was his final stint as leader of the opposition in this forum, and the session was charming. It covered the coast-to-coast route, which travels through his Richmond constituency, the importance of cricket in schools, AI and tolerance. Even the question covering the thorniest topic, Northern Ireland, was polite: Sunak merely pointed out that it was a special part of the UK which required great care, and asked Starmer not to neglect it. The Prime Minister agreed. Starmer paid tribute to Sunak’s service, hard work and decency,

Who runs Britain’s foreign policy? Not the government, that’s clear. At PMQs, Sir Keir Starmer got a monumental roasting from Rishi Sunak whose patience seems to be wearing thin.  Technically, Rishi was asking questions but in fact he was correcting Labour’s latest raft of blunders. He began by urging the PM to have a discreet word with his foreign secretary, David Lammy, who appears to be learning on the job. Rishi suggested that Lammy should give China a rap over the knuckles for its ‘dangerous escalatory acts in the Taiwan Strait.’  Sir Keir nodded along. He agreed to ‘co-operate as a permanent member of the Security Council’ and he promised

Neither Keir Starmer nor Rishi Sunak were very good at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though Starmer didn’t get his own job title wrong this time, he did still speak as though he was the leader of the opposition attacking the Conservatives in government, rather like he’s the guy in charge. Sunak decided to punch the bruise on the winter fuel payment and then make a handbrake turn to British farming, which left the Prime Minister a little discombobulated, as he clearly hadn’t prepared anything on that subject. But he was unable to talk about one of the biggest issues of the week, which was the mass early release of prisoners,

Wow. For Rishi fans, that was one to forget. The Tory leader lacked his usual fluency and focus at PMQs today. Instead of a hungry whippet leaping out of the traps, we watched a fretful hare being chased around the circuit. If mockery won votes, this was a landslide Rishi’s sub-par effort coincided with a rare display of competence from Sir Keir Starmer who, for once, used clever tactics at the despatch box. He cooked up a difficult to answer question and asked it again and again. Why doesn’t he do that every week? Rishi kept parroting the same non-answers which made him look feeble. The issue was Rwanda, and