Even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day. A level of success to which Kemi Badenoch can only aspire right now. We’ve reached the point where her having a decent stab at approximating some intelligent questions goes down as an unmitigated triumph. Not that it really matters any more.
To care about the Tory leader’s performances at prime minister’s questions is to commit a category error. She has become an irrelevance both to Labour and her own MPs. Possibly even to herself. Though that might require a level of personal insight that is beyond her.
Two weeks ago, KemiKaze failed to notice that Keir Starmer had already U-turned on the winter fuel allowance and repeatedly asked him when he was going to U-turn. Not her finest hour. Some of her frontbench colleagues were almost in tears. Though Robert Jenrick was crying with laughter. You can see why he has been keeping up the perma-campaign to take her job. She never fails to keep giving him reasonable grounds for hope.
At Wednesday’s PMQs Kemi was back asking about the winter fuel allowance again. For reasons best known to herself, she has got it into her head that the only reason Starmer backtracked was down to her demanding that he did a fortnight previously. It hasn’t occurred to her that public opinion and some extremely grumpy Labour MPs might have been rather more prominent in Keir’s mind. He really doesn’t need to dance to the beat of a party that is trailing the Lib Dems and Reform in some polls.
“Glad you’re catching up,” Keir said cheerily. But only a little. Kemi was still a fortnight behind everyone else. And she clearly hadn’t been listening to the chancellor’s speech earlier that morning in which she had indicated that the new means-tested threshold would be in place in time for next winter’s payments. Labour had been right to stabilise the economy first, Starmer continued.
The mention of the £22bn black hole seemed to derange Kemi. She started yelling “chaos, chaos, chaos”. You’d have thought she would have got used to Starmer not really answering her questions in the way she would like by now. Would have factored that into her attack lines. Yet she continues to take it as a personal affront. And her accusations of chaos fell flat. Because not every U-turn is a sign of chaos. Sometimes it’s pragmatism. You make one choice with one set of circumstances. And if they change, then you make another. It’s how most people live their lives.
“Chaos, chaos, chaos,” Kemi shouted. She moved on to the two-child benefit limit. What did Starmer believe in? She believed fervently in child poverty, she said. More or less. Most charities and thinktanks had concluded that lifting the cap would be the most effective way of lifting children out of poverty.
But that was not a Britain that KemiKaze wanted to see. Far better to make some children pay for the sins of their parents. If some hard-up families couldn’t restrict themselves to just two kids then the third one deserved to starve to death. Because that would teach it a lesson. That was Kemi’s way. That was the Conservative way. Babies born to be scroungers were a blight on all of us. It was an unusual take for a party leader. But I guess George Osborne would have been cheering her on.
“I know what I believe in,” said Kemi. We all know what she believes in. The last thing that she read on social media. “But the prime minister has to look in his own folder to know what he believes in.” This came out as a torrent. As if she thought it was her best line of the day. Only she hadn’t quite realised she herself had just read it out of her own folder. Sometimes her handlers must despair. Wrangling Kemi is a thankless task. She has no idea she is her own worst enemy.
Not that this was a vintage performance from Starmer by any means. But it didn’t need to be. He no longer regards Badenoch as a serious opponent. Just a mild irritation who will sooner or later no longer be around to bother him. Maybe he’s even getting just a bit too casual. Not spending quite as long preparing for this weekly set piece as he used to. Other more pressing things on his mind. His barbs and repartee sometimes lapsing into outright condescension. Not a good look.
Mostly Keir just ignored whatever Kemi had to say and used his slots for his own soundbites. Kemi was on the side of the Russian on Chagos. Which is almost true. Only she and Putin have described it as a sellout. The US and our allies seem to be in favour. She was also a Russian stooge over Ukraine. Probably unfair.
But she should learn to think before she speaks in future so that her words can’t be twisted. Though that’s not her style. She chose to end in self-immolation with a critique of the trade deal with the US. She didn’t seem to know that we were paying less in steel tariffs than the rest of the world.
As so often these days, it was the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, who appeared to be the real opposition. Certainly Starmer accords him greater bandwidth and credibility. Davey is the only leader to talk of Donald Trump in the same way as the rest of the country. An unstable president who cannot be trusted to keep his word on anything. That must hurt Keir. Because he knows it’s true.
The only other highlight of a dismal session was a first question from the new Reform MP, Sarah Pochin, who wasted no time in establishing her xenophobic credentials by calling for a ban on the burqa. Maybe she would like nuns to go bare-headed as well. Starmer refused to engage. Merely pointing out that as she had in a former life been a supporter of Liz Truss, then maybe she was fully behind Reform’s economic plans to bankrupt the country.
We ended with a point of order from Tory Jesse Norman. It was fine when Conservative prime ministers failed to answer any questions, he said. But it was beyond the pale for a Labour leader to do the same. The speaker merely observed that the purpose of PMQs had never been for the prime minister to answer questions. It was performative sideshow. And an opportunity for Kemi to express her existential futility in interpretive dance.
