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Commons convention dictates that when the prime minister is away, the opposition party must also field a deputising figure at PMQs. Given the pace at which Keir Starmer has accumulated air miles in recent weeks — as an attendee of a vast array of summits, conferences and cosier tête-à-têtes — Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet would do well to remain vigilant.
Indeed, today was an early test of the Conservative leader’s novel approach to PMQs sessions sans Starmer. When appointing her shadow cabinet, Badenoch raised the odd eyebrow by not appointing a deputy leader — in the vein of Oliver Dowden or Dominic Raab or, indeed, Angela Rayner. When Starmer is otherwise engaged, therefore, Badenoch has no official stand-in; instead, she plans to pick from a rotating cast of Conservative frontbenchers.
Today, the honour of helming PMQs on Badenoch’s behalf fell to Alex Burghart, who — thanks to the Tory parliamentary party’s diminutive post-election state — already holds two shadow cabinet posts.
The shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow Northern Ireland secretary is, however, also the closest thing Badenoch has to a de jure deputy. Having entered parliament together at the 2017 election, Burghart and Badenoch also resigned from Boris Johnson’s government as a collective — alongside Neil O’Brien, Lee Rowley and Julia Lopez. Today, this Conservative cabal reflects the outline of Badenoch’s inner circle (minus O’Brien, who treacherously backed Jenrick in the Tory leadership contest).
The tone at deputy PMQs, it’s often noted, is different to the main show. Dowden and Rayner’s tussles had a decidedly less formal feel, as the deputies substituted pointed political barbs for quips about their auburn hair.
In this regard, there were signs Burghart’s surlier, sharper questions wrongfooted Rayner. After a very brief (and strikingly loveless) exchange of pleasantries, Burghart began abruptly: “What is the government doing to bring down inflation?”
The question followed the news this morning that inflation rose back above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target in the year to October. Still, Rayner’s response was to address Burghart’s relative anonymity. “Many people might not know”, the deputy PM declared, “but [Burghart] was the minister for growth under Liz Truss when inflation was 11.1 per cent and growth flatlined. So we’re doing much better than he did.”
For Labour MPs, any reference to the former PM is pure political catnip — and their roaring cheers reflected their giddy excitement.
But Burghart returned to his point. “First we had above inflation pay rises for the unions, then we had a budget that the OBR said would increase inflation. This morning we had City economists — real economists Mr Speaker — saying that next year inflation would hit 3 per cent.”
Does the deputy PM agree that the government’s decisions mean “higher inflation for working people?”, he asked.
This time it was Rayner’s turn to be concise: “I’ll ask the Right Honourable Gentleman, 11.1 per cent or 3 per cent?”. Two answers in, and two reminders of the Conservative Party’s greatest burden this parliament: its record last parliament.
Burghart, as a member of Badenoch’s inner circle of MPs, has reportedly been helping his leader prepare for PMQs. The result today was a pretty similar tactical approach, designed to catch Rayner out with short, snappish questions on a range of topics. But Burghart’s line of inquiry, generally focussed on Labour’s “broken promises” to Conservative-voting groups (farmers, pensioners, businesspeople etc), was also far tighter than Badenoch’s in recent weeks.
There was an ominous momentum then, as Burghart switched to farming for his third question, following the thousands-strong protest in Westminster yesterday. At the Whitehall rally, which Badenoch addressed, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary said he spoke to “elderly men in tears” and children “worried about their parents”.
“What would the Right Honourable lady like to say to them?”, he asked.
Rayner insisted that Labour is “absolutely committed” to British farmers and claimed that the Conservatives “couldn’t even get the money out the door for farmers”. “The farmers know they ruined it for them, and that’s why we’re in government, and they’re not”, the deputy prime minister said.
Burghart responded by referencing statistics that suggest 75 per cent of farms will be affected by Labour’s inheritance tax changes. It’s “clear the government hasn’t got its facts right”, he added.
But Rayner hit back, intriguingly, with the staunchest defence of the government’s IHT reforms yet. The Labour benches cheered as she reiterated, contrary to Burghart’s stats, that the “vast majority” of farming estate owners will be “totally unaffected” and “pay no tax”. That, presumably, is what Labour MPs want when it comes to the row over the government’s inheritance tax proposals: a bit of bullishness.
Nevertheless, Burghart argued the farmers’ protest shows Labour’s budget is “unravelling”. He went on in an especially revealing passage: “The Treasury says the family farms tax will raise on average £441 million a year. The Treasury also says that the public sector pay rises that the government announced in July will cost £9.4 billion a year. That’s over twenty-one times as much.
“Why does the government think that above inflation pay rises for the unions are worth so much more?”
Burghart’s decision to play public sector workers off against landowning farmers hit by Labour’s IHT changes was instructive — and it risked making Rayner’s argument for her.
In truth, Labour has only tentatively made the argument in recent days that the IHT changes are part of a swathe of budget “choices” that, in the round, prioritised the interests of “working people” above all. But late last month, Rachel Reeves approached the budget with a fundamentally simple frame of reference: the government put more money “in the pockets” of workers and raised taxes on businesses, private schools and asset-rich farmers.
Similarly, Burghart’s furious criticism reflects how the Conservative Party is approaching opposition. In recent weeks, Tory spokespeople have blasted all the key revenue-raising measures in the budget: on the winter fuel allowance, the plan to levy VAT on independent schools and employer national insurance.
And this week, the Conservative Party has thrown everything it has politically at Labour’s so-called “family farms tax”. Addressing protesters yesterday, Badenoch declared: “This policy is so obviously unfair, so obviously cruel. We will do everything we can to make sure that in a few years time, if they do not U-turn now, we will reverse this tax.”
In time, if the data reflects that Conservative MPs have ploughed such resources into defending rich landowners, the politics of Burghart’s budget criticism becomes far trickier. Labour, after all, insists it is extracting revenue in the name of change. The Conservatives, Starmer could well retort, are seeking to block change in the name of private schools, non-domiciled taxpayers, private jet users, capital gains taxpayers and asset-rich landowners.
At the budget, I argued yesterday, “Labour sought to identify ‘a people’ or ‘its people’ — a perfectly proper, even indispensable, aspect of the politics of government”. Conservative MPs, with their recent criticism, are in effect identifying theirs — and doing so on Labour’s terms.
And still, the immediate challenge for this new Tory top team is to demonstrate political and intellectual leadership by saying something new — either about Starmer or Badenoch’s mode of conservatism. By this measure, Burghart did not succeed today.
As long as the Conservatives remain so politically predictable, Rayner and Starmer will be able to shake their attacks, however furious they may be — whoever delivers them.
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