Is it Kemi Badenoch’s job to make Keir Starmer look fit for office? At the new Tory leader’s appearances at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), she behaves like it is.
Clown antics at PMQs
In the chamber, Badenoch said:
We had a budget in March this year and tractors were not blockading the streets of Whitehall afterwards
But as people pointed out on social media, the literal opposite is the case. There were dozens of tractors blocking the streets outside Westminster after the Tories’ budget in March. They were protesting post-Brexit trade arrangements:
Kemi Badenoch at #PMQs: “We had a budget in March this year and tractors were not blockading the streets of Whitehall afterwards.”
Here are the tractors blockading the streets of Whitehall in March, protesting – you really couldn’t make this up – Badenoch’s trade policies. 😂 pic.twitter.com/6KDPJzH9GQ
— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) November 27, 2024
Badenoch was the business secretary overseeing such policies, so indeed she probably left PMQs in a clown car.
The difference between then and now is that the Labour Party has hit wealthy people with taxes through reforming agricultural property relief. So the guardians of the upper class in the media and political establishment like Reform were louder about it. Other relief available for married people means many farms won’t pay inheritance tax on estates worth £3m or less.
At PMQs, Badenoch also said:
Mr Speaker if he wants to know what Conservatives would do, he should resign and find out… there’s a petition out there – two million people asking him to go
Starmer retorted:
She talks about a petition. We had a massive petition on the 4th July in this country. We spent years taking our party from a party of protest to a party of government
To be sure, Starmer is also talking nonsense here. Only 20% of the country actually voted Labour in the July general election. And the Labour right under Starmer received three million less votes than Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership did – what Starmer calls a movement of ‘protest’. It’s only our problematic electoral system that gifted Starmer his majority.
Of course, Badenoch’s party garnered even less support in July than Starmer so, again, she isn’t helping herself.
Later, the new Tory leader went ahead with a further act of self-sabotage:
Does the prime minister stand by his promise to ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030 even if more jobs are lost?
Responding, Starmer said:
I would remind the leader of the opposition that the [electric vehicle] mandate… was actually introduced by the last government. I would also remind her that she is the business secretary that introduced it.
The transition to zero emission vehicles requires 22% of new cars sold in 2024 to be zero emission. This rises to 80% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.
Here, Badenoch is trashing her own policy and it’s actually a vital one to address spiralling climate disaster.
SNP steps up
Later in PMQs, SNP Commons leader Stephen Flynn skewered Starmer:
We are currently in the middle of BBC anti- scam awareness week… The advice in that context is always simple -if you see a scam, you should report it… With that in mind, can the prime minister advise the House, is he aware of anyone who’s promised to reduce energy bills only for them to increase… Is he aware of anyone who promised to protect pensioners, only to pick their pockets for their winter fuel allowance?
The Labour government recently admitted that the winter fuel cut will push 250,000 pensioners into poverty by 2029-30. At the same time, Starmer has overseen a further increase of 1.2% on the energy price cap, following a 10% increase in October.
Badenoch, meanwhile, seems to only serve to make Starmer seem palatable, despite the Labour government’s record so far. That’s the Tories for you.
Featured image via the House Of Commons
