With little more than a week to go until the Christmas recess, the Commons is in festive overdrive. Demob happy. A few minutes in to the year’s penultimate prime minister’s questions with MPs from both sides shouting and cheering, the speaker interrupted proceedings to say: “We don’t need the panto auditions any more.” To which the natural response was: “Ooh yes we do.” Because that’s pretty much the whole purpose of PMQs at the best of times. A feelgood experience for some. A feelbad experience for others. Noise with no substance.
No one embraces the panto spirit more than Kemi Badenoch. Kemi has come to realise that the bar is actually quite low for her to remain as Tory leader. All she has to do is be a little bit better than Keir Starmer at PMQs. Which is turning out to be a lot less difficult than she imagined. Sometimes just standing up is enough.
Though being good at PMQs does nothing to shift the polls – the Tories are still tanking behind Labour – it does wonders for the morale of her backbenchers. And they are the men and women keeping her in a job. If you had suggested that Kemi might last longer than Keir just six months ago, you would have got long odds. But now she’s an odds on favourite. It’s still unlikely she will be Tory leader at the next election, but that’s a long way off. And Kemi isn’t that bothered. She’s happy to bank whatever wins she can get. For almost the first time in her life, her confidence is not entirely misplaced.
Credit also to Kemi’s minders. Somehow they have managed to steer her away from her late-night browsing of far-right conspiracy theories on the dark web. Instead they have instructed here to try to keep it simple at PMQs. By all means adopt some cutesy Cinders panto repartee if you must. But play the questioning straight. Stick to the basics of, “how are things going?”. Because the reality is that most people think the answer is, “badly verging on terribly”. There’s only so long a prime minister can carry on blaming the other party. People expected things to have noticeably changed by now.
So that’s what Kemi did. Took a few potshots at Starmer being a caretaker leader and then cherrypicked her way through areas of health, education, policing and energy on which Labour were weak. Job done. This was politics 101 for any opposition leader. Keir could only sound defensive in reply. Try to imply that Kemi’s job was also on the line when everyone knows it’s his backbenchers who are having the change of leadership chats. His cabinet ministers eyeing up the perfect time to make a move. The country doesn’t much care whether Kemi comes or goes. That’s her blessing and her curse.
If Keir couldn’t commit to closer economic ties with Europe, Ed doubted he would still be standing at the dispatch box this time next year. Photograph: House of Commons/PA
Starmer could only hope for damage limitation. Some days you win, some you lose. This was always going to be one of the latter days. Right now Keir is living his worst life. Deep-rooted problems in the economy and his own party turning on him. Nothing to be done other than adopt full-on survival mode and hope to catch a break some time soon. As for this PMQs, it would soon be yesterday’s social media fodder. The Westminster bubble were the only people who cared and they would soon move on to the next crisis.
But Keir did not come off unscathed. Though it wasn’t Kemi who inflicted the wounds that really hurt. It was the ever so polite Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader who would never resort to panto in the chamber, who cut Starmer to the quick. Kemi could not go near Donald Trump’s latest rants on Europe – she is far too invested in staying close to the far right in-crowd – but Davey could. And did. Why the silence on the new US security strategy? Did the prime minister appreciate the irony of Agent Orange talking about Europe trampling on democratic principles? Any comments on “civilisational erasure”?
Nothing. Starmer couldn’t bring himself to say a word against the US president. Couldn’t believe that everyone who had told him The Donald was uber fickle and that his support could not be counted on were correct. Couldn’t defend Sadiq Khan from Trump’s grotesque racism. Would rather say nothing and let the Russians believe Europe was a pushover.
Davey went on to ask about closer economic ties with the EU. If Keir couldn’t commit to that then Ed rather doubted the prime minister would still be standing at the dispatch box this time next year. Et tu, Ed? He could take that sort of line from Kemi any day of the week. She calls for him to resign almost on a daily basis. Sometimes twice on the same day for different things. Keir is often unsure whether he is meant to unresign and then resign again. But to hear it from Gentleman Ed was too much to bear. More in sorrow than in anger.
It wasn’t just Starmer who was having a bad day. Rachel Reeves had her own ordeal to face in the guise of a 90-minute appearance before the Treasury select committee to answer questions on the budget. The main focus was on the process. How come so much of the budget was leaked in advance? In fact all of it, even down to the bits that had been planned and then dropped. It had been as if the whole country had been on a Zoom call with Starmer and Reeves during the build up.
Rachel was horrified by all the leaks. No one was more horrified than her. It turned out there were key differences between leaks and briefings. Briefings were leaks that were authorised. Leaks were unauthorised leaks. Though it was all so long ago she couldn’t remember which bits were leaks and which bits were briefings. So she would be setting up an inquiry to investigate which leaks she had leaked and which she had briefed. Confused? She was. But the inquiry would run in parallel to the one Keir was conducting into what Keir had leaked to the media about the leadership challenge leaks.
Thankfully for Rachel, the questioning moved on to growth. It was there even if you can’t measure it, she said. It was just her luck to have delivered a budget that had proved a big hit with both her leftwing backbenchers and the financial markets, but been rubbished by almost everyone else. What were the chances?
