The Conservative leader is often accused, not least of all by this commentator, of constructing her arguments based on a skim of her social media feed — from which she duly draws a litany of pugnacious anti-Labour material. By repeating the Online Right’s favourite lines back at them, Kemi Badenoch can usually count on a few retweets. That is how LOTO measures success at PMQs, we are led to assume.
But social media kudos does not generate the Westminster weather — the dismal write-ups of Badenoch first 100 days as Tory leader are ample proof. Perhaps this point explains her change of tack today.
This afternoon, the Conservative leader regurgitated — headline by headline — the front page splashes of those newspapers most friendly to the party. The Daily Telegraph and Mail newsdesks in effect dictated Badenoch PMQs script this afternoon. Unfortunately for the Conservative leadership however, the session arrived at an all too familiar conclusion.
First, the Tory leader grilled the prime minister on the UK’s immigration and refugee rules after the Telegraph reported on the case of a Palestinian family, who were granted the right to live in the UK after applying through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees.
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The Conservative leader said the decision, handed down by a judge, was “completely wrong, it cannot be allowed to stand”. She asked if the government would appeal the verdict.
“She is right”, Keir Starmer responded. “It is the wrong decision.”
But the prime minister went on to point out the grave error in Badenoch’s question, framed as an attack on the government’s immigration stance. He added: “She hasn’t quite done her homework because the decision in question was taken under the last government.”
Starmer closed: “It should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration, it should be the government that makes the policy, that is the principle and the home secretary is already looking at the legal loophole which we need to close in this particular case”.
But Badenoch was not done. Undaunted by the prime minister’s steady, assured response, the Tory leader insisted Starmer had “not answered the question.”
“If he plans to appeal, then the appeal may be unsuccessful and the law will need to be changed”, she began. “The issue we are discussing today is about judicial systems. We cannot be in a situation where we allow enormous numbers of people to exploit our laws in this way.”
She called on the prime minister to commit to bringing forward legislation to address any possible gap in the law, or amend the asylum bill that is currently making its way through parliament.
Starmer cooly referred back to his previous answer and informed Badenoch that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is already “working on closing this loophole”.
Then came the obligatory swipe at the Conservative Party’s record on immigration — a risk Badenoch consciously ran with this line of questioning. “They lost control of immigration”, Starmer said. Referring to the government’s borders bill, he accused the Conservatives of voting “against increased powers to deal with those that are running the vile trade of people smuggling”.
Badenoch was visibly affronted by the prime minister’s comeback. “If the prime minister was on top of his brief, perhaps he would be able to answer some questions”, she blasted.
Facing crescendoing heckles from the Labour benches, Badenoch called on the government to bring forward legal changes to clarify how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) should be treated in UK law. She asked: “Does he agree that we should legislate even if lawyers warn that this might be incompatible with human rights law?”
At this juncture, the prime minister had had enough.
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“She complains about scripted answers and questions, her script doesn’t allow her to listen to the answer”, Starmer responded. “She asked me if we’re going to change the law and close the loophole in question one, I said yes. She asked me again in question two, and I said yes. She asked me again in question three, it’s still yes.”
Conservative MPs found themselves stunned into silence and awkward expressions crept onto the faces of Robert Jenrick and Chris Philp, who flanked Badenoch as her frontbench outriders this afternoon.
The Tory leader had been stifled by her own script. Her response reflected her understandable frustration. “He’s not listening, he is too busy defending the international law framework”, Badenoch said.
The buffering Conservative leader had gotten stuck on the minutiae of her first question and the prime minister’s reply. While Starmer did not directly declare he would look to appeal the verdict, he did answer in a more substantive sense, revealing the government would address the “loophole” itself.
As such, by refusing to shift her focus and accept that not every question she asks from the despatch box will receive a specific acknowledgement, Badenoch lost any semblance of momentum. The Conservative leader’s apparent inability to recognise the direction of a debate reflects poorly on her alleged attack-dog acumen — so lauded by her allies during the 2024 leadership election.
It also shows an inability, on behalf of Badenoch’s inner circle, to game out the prime minister’s answers and respond accordingly. One supposes the strategy was to ask very specific questions and, at every turn, call out Starmer for sidestepping. But the approach missed — and misses — the raw politics of prime minister’s questions. The Conservative leader’s technical rejoinders on the minutiae of the exchange reflect a serious lack of thoughtful planning by her PMQs team. She was left carping from the sidelines about some minor moot detail, as Starmer marched ahead.
Badenoch used her fourth question to make a more general point in an attempt to break into a wider stride. “This is precisely why we need to break the conveyor belt from arriving in the UK, to acquiring indefinite leave to remain, and then a British passport, and now a right to bring six family members here as well”, Badenoch insisted.
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She asked the prime minister: “Will he now support our plans to toughen the process on indefinite leave to remain and make getting a British passport a privilege, not a right?”
Badenoch’s reference to her first and only policy as Conservative leader invited Starmer’s return with a Labour attack line. He hit back: “They presided over record high levels of immigration. It reached nearly one million. It was a one nation experiment in open borders.”
For her final question, Badenoch switched papers and referenced a recent Daily Mail scoop. She accused the government of recruiting a chief inspector of borders who “lives in Finland and wants to work from home”. She asked why the British public should put up with this.
Starmer instantly countered that the individual in question was appointed in 2019 by the last government. He then worked from Finland for the following five years.
“We’ve changed that and he is now going to be working from the United Kingdom full time”, Starmer proclaimed.
Once again, it is striking just how poorly researched Badenoch’s questions are. The Conservative leader read the Daily Mail splash this morning and did no further digging, no checking of details — no deep thinking about how the attack line might backfire.
The exchange rather lends credence to the prime minister’s claim, issued in his first answer, that Badenoch does not do her “homework”. At the same time, the Tory leader accuses Starmer of not being across the detail. The whole approach is simply bizarre.
In her final question, Badenoch had also noted there are “very serious questions” being asked about the attorney general Lord Hermer, referencing comments made by Lord Glasman, the leading Labour peer, this week. “If we are serious about protecting our borders we need to make sure we appoint people who believe in our country and everything we stand for”, Badenoch said.
Starmer closed: “She talks about the attorney general. She sat round the cabinet table with an attorney who was later sacked for breaching national security.”
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This was, and I refuse to caveat this point, a truly miserable performance by Badenoch. There was no sense of invention, no strategic nous or rhetorical force. Her material, borne of the Telegraph and the Mail, was poor — but her delivery and overall performance was worse. Starmer was right to label the whole thing “tedious”. Perhaps that particular adjective is too kind.
It is right that Badenoch, as Conservative leader, only has a narrow room for manoeuvre. She remains hostage to her party’s record on the economy, on public services — and on immigration in particular. And yet, she feels duty-bound to address the latter topic to appease the right-wing press and fight back against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
What little political space Badenoch has been afforded, however, she has proven singularly unable to exploit.
Let’s step back. The Conservative leader’s reputation as a combative commons operator was supposed to exact crucial gains for her party at prime minister’s questions. By relentlessly mauling Starmer, Badenoch could accomplish what Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat could not. Her early successes would impede Reform’s insurgency and win plaudits in the press.
But Badenoch is consistently dispatched by Starmer — whom Tories simultaneously ridicule as wooden and grey. The Conservative leader has surprised everyone with quite how poor she is at the part of the job her advocates insisted she would excel at.
Let’s cut that down: the Conservative leader has surprised everyone with quite how poor she is.
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Now try this…
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The latest ConservativeHome survey.
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