Ever since Kemi Badenoch became Tory leader, her many Conservative critics have claimed she has failed to make any impact. Any number of backbenchers have been only too willing, albeit usually under the cowardly cover of anonymity, to claim she is going nowhere.
Principal among their complaints is that she never seems to get the better of her weekly parliamentary jousts with Keir Starmer. Time and again, she asks the wrong question, chooses the wrong topic, and lacks the wit to seize on any missteps by the Prime Minister, they moan. Why can’t she give Starmer and co both barrels – just like showman Nigel Farage does on a regular basis?
It is not a criticism likely to be made of her again anytime soon. Not after her comprehensive filleting of Starmer over his defeat by Labour welfare rebels.
Initially, Starmer fended off Badenoch’s barbs at him. It looked as though she would be repulsed yet again. You could imagine her Tory detractors already licking their lips, muttering, “She can’t even score an open goal.” But Badenoch wasn’t finished. Starmer was merely the hors d’oeuvres. She took her knife to the person sitting behind Starmer, Rachel Reeves, asking him to guarantee she was safe in her job.
Starmer the lawyer should have seen it coming a mile off. It’s the oldest trick in the political book: he could have answered with a categorical yes. But he didn’t. In political terms, he left Reeves drifting in the wind. The chancellor’s emotional and distraught response signalled that Badenoch had scored a direct hit.
A rare moment in such parliamentary exchanges, which, for the most part, have nothing to do with democracy or debate and are all about posturing, platitudes and pantomime politics. Knockout blows are about as common as someone scoring in the Eton Wall Game – about one per decade. Badenoch didn’t just score, she smashed the ball through the back of the net.
The most important consequence of today’s events is how, indeed whether, Reeves can survive such a harrowing and humbling public ordeal. And whether Starmer can re-establish his and his administration’s personal and political authority. That is all in the balance. But there can be no doubt that eight months after becoming opposition leader, Badenoch has arrived on the big stage.
Her stock reply to complaints that she has not made her mark as a leader has been that it took heroine Margaret Thatcher years to do so. Thatcher became a formidable parliamentary performer, but it took her a long time. In her early years as opposition leader, she was frequently outwitted by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Thatcher’s Tory critics said it showed she wasn’t up to it. Just like Badenoch’s Conservative critics. They won’t be making the same criticism again anytime soon.
In blasting open the fault line between Starmer and Reeves with a lethal precision, a skill most thought was not in her armoury, Badenoch has at long last given demoralised Conservatives reasons to be cheerful.
