KemiKaze’s best PMQs so far leaves Starmer entirely unruffled | John Crace

Who would have guessed? Kemi Badenoch may be a slow learner – a painfully slow learner – but she is at least a learner. This may be not much, but it is a lifeline. Possibly. Whether it comes too late is another matter. The latest ConservativeHome poll of party members shows Kemi tumbling down the popularity rankings.

Immediately after the election she was well ahead of the rest of the shadow cabinet. Now she’s down to seventh. Even halfwits like Robert Jenrick, Laura Trott and Chris Philp are ahead of her. Imagine that. Most people would want to give up at that point. It seems the more you see of Kemi, the less there is of her to like.

Call it a combination of arrogance, laziness and delusion, but KemiKaze’s usual approach to prime minister’s questions is to burble on about the latest conspiracy theory. One of her many failings is that she believes whatever she reads on X. Sometimes she is subject to Elon Musk sensory overload so she is no more than a scattergun, asking six separate questions about whatever nonsense has kept her awake the night before. It’s preparation, but not as we know it.

So you’d have put money on Badenoch using her time at Wednesday’s PMQs to follow up Donald Trump’s pardon for the drug dealer Ross Ulbricht. Time to release all our middle-class white drug dealers. Then to pursue the opposition’s – or at least the Philpster’s – belief that there had been a government cover-up into the investigation of the Southport murders.

Maybe Kemi does have a self-preservation instinct after all. Because she certainly saved herself an embarrassing lecture on the laws concerning contempt of court from an accomplished lawyer. Instead, to everyone’s surprise – including that of her own MPs who have learned not to expect anything but a ritual humiliation on Wednesday lunchtimes – Badenoch said she was going to defer any discussion of Southport until after sentencing. Though sadly, not till she knew more.

So maybe this week was an outlier. A black swan event. The Tories will take whatever they can get, even if normal service may be resumed next week. Instead KemiKaze’s fragile concentration span allowed her to devote all six questions to one subject. Admittedly not a subject about which she had much knowledge, but you can’t have everything.

What Kemi wanted to talk about was the schools bill, a piece of legislation that had come to her attention only a couple of weeks back when she saw an opportunity to call for a national inquiry over child-grooming gangs. First she mentioned that English schools had climbed the Pisa league table under the Tories – partly because they had managed to exclude underachieving children from the data – and then she described the changes to academies as “socialist vandalism”.

Keir Starmer also appeared moderately surprised to find himself answering questions on schools. He hadn’t really come prepared for this. But it was what it was and he backed himself to know more about the schools bill than the leader of the opposition. He wasn’t wrong. But first he played for time. Pointing out that academies had been a Labour creation, before ignoring standards and focusing on other areas of the bill. The safeguarding measures. The breakfast clubs. How come the Tories had voted against them?

Now it was Kemi’s turn to ignore Starmer. She reverted back to academies. Did the prime minister not realise that his bill would impose a pay freeze on some teachers? This must be about the first time a Tory leader had ever called for a public sector pay rise.

It was a nice try. Quite sweet really. Kemi trying to play the game without properly understanding the rules. Because it turned out her question was a day late. Labour had submitted an amendment to their own bill at 6pm on Tuesday to make it clear that no teacher would have their pay cut. Which is another way of saying that Badenoch hadn’t been paying attention and that she had rather wasted her’s and everyone else’s time. As Starmer was quick to point out.

There was no real coming back from that. You could feel the energy dissipating from the Tory benches. This had been KemiKaze’s best PMQs by far and still it had not been nearly good enough. Philp – yet again wearing his idiotic Union flag socks: surely he will grow up one day? – resorted to some mindless heckling. “I expected better from you,” said the speaker. No one else did.

One person who hadn’t yet got a mention was Trump. Starmer hadn’t even used his opening remarks to congratulate the president on his inauguration or to come up with some sycophantic sweet-nothings about looking forward to working with the new administration. I guess that was too much, even for him. Everyone would have known he hadn’t meant it. And it wasn’t as if The Donald was about to give him any preferential treatment.

Even the Tories seemed to shy away from their enthusiasm for Trump. As did Nigel Farage, freshly home from Washington after not being invited to any of the big parties. The Donald’s eyes are now firmly fixed on the tech billionaires. Bit-part UK politicians have been put out with the trash. It was left to Ed Davey to check in with Starmer about the US president. Would he confirm that he wouldn’t be lowering British regulations to curry favour with Trump? Keir gave him the nod on that.

Just one last awkward moment when Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Greens, asked about the third runway at Heathrow. Had Starmer had a Damascene conversion since his previous objections? This one will run and run when the announcement is made next week. All Starmer could manage was a holding operation by suggesting that Ramsay was a nimby for not wanting wind generators in his own constituency.

And that was just about that. Not a PMQ for the ages. Inconsequential even. But no harm done for Labour. If that was Kemi putting her best foot forward, Starmer could live with that.