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Has Kemi Badenoch already said too much, too soon? At prime minister’s questions this afternoon, the Conservative leader continued with her prevailing scattergun strategy and predictably castigated a series of perceived vices.
Yet Keir Starmer, a purportedly exposed prime minister, dismissed each complaint with pithy references to Badenoch’s own travails and unforced errors as Tory leader. He ended the session with barely a scratch landed — despite Badenoch’s swinging blows.
After all, we can forget the feverish talk during the long leadership race about Badenoch’s combative despatch box demeanour: after three bouts, she has still failed to meaningfully fluster Starmer. PMQs serves as the focal point of the week for any opposition leader — particularly one looking to introduce themselves to the nation, and particularly one facing a government fighting battles on multiple fronts.
Today then, was another opportunity spurned by Badenoch.
It didn’t have to be this way — and there were some tentative signs this afternoon that Badenoch might have resolved on a more effective PMQs approach. The Conservative leader looked to have Starmer pinned down after a couple of questions on the budget and business confidence.
Badenoch’s line of inquiry began with reference to comments made by chancellor Rachel Reeves this week. Taking questions at the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI) summit on Monday, Reeves insisted, amid serious grumblings following the autumn budget, that she would not “come back with more borrowing or more taxes”.
Badenoch wanted Starmer to repeat Reeves’ claims on the commons record for posterity. “I know that telling the truth to this House is important to the prime minister”, the Conservative leader clamoured. But Starmer refused to bite. “I am not going to write the next five years of budgets here”, he hit back.
It’s the sort of awkward non-denial that a leader of the opposition should be drawing out of an under-pressure prime minister. And so, amid cheers from Conservative MPs, Badenoch noted smugly: “The whole House would have heard him refuse to repeat the chancellor’s pledge — a pledge as worthless as the manifesto promises that he’s talking about.”
The choreography from here is pretty familiar. Some sympathetic media outlet will now write Starmer’s comments up like this: “PM refuses to rule out future tax rises”. That’s totally fair game — and, even, well played by Badenoch.
But unfortunately for the Tory chief, that was as good as it got for her today.
Moving to her second question, Badenoch continued on the subject of business confidence, noting it has “crashed since the budget.”
Starmer repeated that Labour is “fixing the foundations”, an increasingly common refrain in these sessions, before addressing Badenoch directly with a well-targeted retort. The prime minister referred back to the mistake Badenoch made in her last exchange with him across the despatch box, when she foolishly responded to Starmer’s goading and effectively admitted that the Conservatives are “not against” the autumn budget’s investment plans.
Earlier this month, the remark garnered this response from Starmer: “So let me get this straight. She doesn’t want any of the measures in the budget, but she wants all the benefits.”
It was obvious at the time that Badenoch had been caught in a trap, and that Labour would cite the exchange incessantly at subsequent PMQs. And already it has come to pass.
“Two weeks ago”, Starmer asserted today, “she stood there and said that she wanted all the investment, all the benefits of the budget, but she didn’t know how she was going to pay for it”.
The PM went on to note how, perhaps as a result of this egregious slip-up, Badenoch has backtracked on her commitment to reverse the budget’s national insurance increase. Addressing the CBI summit this week, the Tory leader was asked about the employer NI rise and responded: “One of the things we’re going to have to do is rewire everything, so what I’m not going to do is comment on every bit of micro-policy.”
Starmer also noted how the Conservatives’ science, innovation and technology spokesperson, Alan Mak, seemingly recommitted his party to reversing the NI increase this week — throwing Badenoch’s fiscal plans into further doubt. “They really haven’t got a clue what they’re doing”, Starmer declared as roars erupted behind him.
Badenoch’s comeback was awkward at best and constitutional twaddle at worst. “If he wants to know what Conservatives would do he should resign and find out”, she said. The Conservative leader also referred to the petition, backed by 2.7 million signatories (some of whom, presumably, are living, breathing Britons), which has called on Starmer to dissolve parliament.
“There’s a petition out there — two million people asking him to go”, Badenoch blasted.
Wait, did the leader of the opposition, just three weeks into the job, call for the prime minister to resign? Whatever your interpretation, it set Starmer up perfectly. “We had a massive petition on the 4 July in this country”, he told the House, giving the wall of Labour MPs behind him — ever in fine voice — another opportunity to roar.
Badenoch tried again: “Let me give him another example of a real business. Following his Budget the head of McVitie’s has said that it has been harder to understand what the case for investment in the UK is. So while the prime minister has been hobnobbing in Brazil, businesses have been struggling to digest his budget.”
Starmer dismissed the joke, which had conspicuously failed to amuse Badenoch’s backbenches. “I was attending the G20”, the prime minister said. “I suspect on their current trajectory they don’t know whether they are going to attend the G20 or not. Maybe [her] policy commission will come up with an answer on that one.”
The comment follows reports that the Conservative Party is planning to launch a series of policy commissions to deliver proposals later in the parliament.
At this point, Badenoch switched topics and called on Starmer to “show more concern” for the 1,100 people who found out yesterday that they could lose their jobs at Vauxhall’s plant in Luton.
The Conservative leader went on: “So while he flies around making unilateral commitments, back home the real world effects are businesses closing in Bedfordshire and Basildon.
“Does the prime minister stand by his promise to ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030 even if more jobs will be lost?”
Starmer responded: “The question of the position of jobs in Luton is a very serious one and families and workers will be very worried and we are obviously engaging with them. I would remind the leader of the opposition that the EV mandates that are an issue in this particular case were actually introduced by the last government.”
“I would also remind her that she was the business secretary that introduced them.”
Badenoch did not have a strong rejoinder prepared for that — nor did she even attempt to deny her role. “He clearly didn’t read his briefing about the EV mandate”, she hit back, slightly fumbling her words.
The Conservative leader concluded with another quip. “Everyone is unhappy” with the government, she insisted, adding: “Isn’t it a good thing that the chancellor is an expert at customer complaints?”
It was a comment on the apparent controversy, stoked in small “c” conservative quarters, about Rachel Reeves’ CV.
Starmer ploughed on with his usual PMQs peroration — but this one felt less stilted, more indignant at Badenoch’s line of inquiry, and therefore more effective. She just “read out the charge sheet of the last government: everything is broken”, Starmer began.
“They come here every week with absolutely nothing to offer except complaints: nothing constructive, no new ideas, they don’t know what they are doing from one day to the next.”
He added: “They’re jumping on every bandwagon that’s passing, while we’re taking the country forward.”
All of a sudden, it is very apparent that Badenoch’s poor PMQs performances are not isolated events or reflections of erasable teething problems. Rather, they mirror and are founded on mistakes she has made in other areas of her brief as Tory leader. Starmer sought to, and succeeded in, exposing them today.
Indeed, since emerging as Conservative leader — having stayed relatively shtum throughout the long leadership race — Badenoch is already on the record as opposing Labour’s employer NI rise, not opposing Labour’s employer NI rise, supporting Labour’s investment plans, opposing Labour’s inheritance tax plans, opposing Labour’s plan to levy VAT on independent schools, opposing Starmer’s “hobnobbing” at the G20 and opposing the government’s EV targets (which Starmer says she signed off as business secretary).
Sure, it’s still early days — but the early days matter; first impressions matter. Badenoch needs a strong performance soon before a narrative crystallises that she’s just not very good at this.
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‘The Opposition are all over the place. Nothing constructive, no new ideas. Just complaints and nothing to say about what they would do — all while running up an unfunded promises wish list of nearly £7 billion in just three weeks.’
— Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves responds to Badenoch’s PMQs performance.
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