PMQs: Badenoch fails to land a sucker punch
PMQs: Badenoch fails to land a sucker punch
Even despite Starmer relying largely on his tired soundbites.
Given the rather distracting backdrop last week of the US election, one could be forgiven for thinking that Kemi Badenoch was only just making her PMQs debut as the Leader of the Opposition. Today, in her second outing, questions took on a domestic dimension - a stark contrast from last week’s all-encompassing focus on Donald Trump’s election victory.
Today’s session provided a good barometer of which issues are likely to dominate future debates, with the Prime Minister scrutinised at length on Labour's recently announced hikes to National Insurance.
Opposition to the NI increase gained cross-party consensus, with Christine Jardine of the Liberal Democrats opening today’s session by inviting the Prime Minister and his Chancellor to her constituency of Edinburgh West, to “explain to those GPs, charities, and others how they are meant to cope without extra support from the government”, rather than asking a question per se.
If Jardine’s invitation was a good indicator of what was to come this session, so too was the Prime Minister’s answer. Starmer turned to old reliable as he answered, “Because of the tough decisions that we took, we have put forward a budget with an extra £25.6bn for the NHS, and for social care.” References to the previous leadership’s shortcomings, and the subsequent, necessary “tough decisions”, came aplenty this session, as the Prime Minister navigated a sea of questions.
The Leader of the Opposition began her session by “welcoming” Starmer back from his COP 29 trip to Azerbaijan, stating that he had come back from “unilaterally making commitments that would make life more expensive for everyone back home”. She then sought to deliver an early blow to the Prime Minister by asking him to “confirm whether he will keep the cap on council tax?”.
Starmer began his defence confidently, stating his pride “in the fact that we’re restoring leadership on climate to this country”, but failed to answer Badenoch’s second inquiry regarding the cap on council tax, which the Conservative Leader noted, jibing “I think the House would have heard that the Prime Minister can neither confirm nor deny whether the cap of council tax was being raised.”
Badenoch tried to gain momentum by asking the PM “how much extra he expects local authorities to raise, to cover the social care funding gap created by the Chancellor’s budget and increases in NI?”. This proved to be a faux pas, however, given Starmer had already addressed this in his first answer. Indeed, Badenoch’s lapse provided the Starmer with an effective soundbite, in which he stated that “Not actually listening to what was said about three minutes ago is a bit of a fundamental failure of the Leader of the Opposition. I just said £600 million, I repeat £600 million.”
Although Badenoch tried to go back on the offensive by driving home questions on council tax and National insurance increases, the Prime Minister came out fighting again: “What did they deliver in 14 years? Low growth, a stagnant economy, a disastrous mini-budget, a £22bn black hole; now, she wants to give me advice on how to run the economy, I don’t want to be rude, but no thank you very much!”
While domestic issues dominated the session, Donald Trump’s election victory did resurface as a topic of discussion this week when Sir Ed Davey challenged the Prime Minister by asking if the UK government would commit to using frozen Russian assets to fund the Ukrainian military. He also asked if Britain and Europe would collaborate to address the gap in assistance that could arise from a potential withdrawal of support from the Trump administration in Ukraine. Just like last week, however, the Prime Minister sidestepped the details of the question and failed to provide anything more than a generic message reiterating support for Ukraine.
The Prime Minister’s exchange with Nigel Farage drew the loudest cheers of the day. When asked by the Reform Leader if it was finally time to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation, Starmer responded that he was glad to see Farage "making a rare appearance back here in Britain". The PM continued: "He's spent so much time in America recently, I was half expecting to see him on the immigration statistics!”.
While the Prime Minister resorted to his tired, rehearsed soundbites often this session, the Leader of the Opposition did not exactly land a sucker punch at this week’s PMQs. It appears, however, that Badenoch has identified some key lines of attack, with National Insurance hikes likely to become a prominent topic to hit the government with.