.png)
3 hours ago
1
We’re going to have to rethink the way we do this. Redefine the parameters. It’s usual to think of prime minister’s questions as a moment of jeopardy for No 10. The brief 10 minutes or so each week when the leader of the opposition gets to make life uncomfortable for the prime minister. When we the punters get to imagine how life might be if she were to get her toes inside Downing Street.
Only it no longer works like this. Because ever since Kemi Badenoch was elected leader of the Conservatives, PMQs has become R&R for Keir Starmer. Nor is it just teething problems for KemiKaze. A slow learner easing her way into the job. Rather it’s that she appears to be getting worse by the week. It’s already a horror show for the Tories, so God knows where we will be in a month or so.
Who would have thought that having seven days to think up six questions was so difficult? They don’t even have to be clever, incisive and funny questions. That’s the icing on the cake. They just have to be reasonably coherent. Hell, it’s not as if Kemi is short of choice. Labour has hardly aced the last seven months. Almost everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong.
Apart from one thing. It should count itself lucky to have Kemi on the opposition benches. Though Starmer needs to tread carefully, for if he carries on like this the Conservatives may replace their leader.
It may be hard to imagine Robert Jenrick or Chris Philp doing any better but stranger things have happened. For one thing, they would be hard pushed to do worse. My dog would give Kemi a run for her money and he’s not that sharp. So Keir might want to consider making Badenoch look good. “You know what? That’s a brilliant question, Kemi. I wish I had thought of that. I’m completely stumped.” Fake it to make it.
So the real interest in PMQs these days is no longer in who wins or who loses. It’s as a window into KemiKaze’s psyche. To see what she is thinking. Or, to be more accurate, what she isn’t thinking. Because if she paused to engage both synapses she would stay silent. As with Donald Trump, she suffers from a mind-body split. Her words have a life independent of her brain. Unlike Trump, she’s not the most powerful person in the world, so no one feels obliged to listen to her. Or take her seriously.
This Wednesday was peak Kemi. Most opposition leaders spend hours in preparation. Collecting their thoughts. Stress-testing their argument. Badenoch had woken up that morning without an idea in her head. For once, there was no culture war battle on X on which she could fixate. Her mind was a tabula rasa. So she glanced at the front pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. And then she made a crucial error. She believed every word. Something even regular readers have learned is a category error. She would indulge in her very own Theatre of the Absurd.
It was a supremely confident Kemi who stood up to ask her first question. She appears to be the only person in the Commons who doesn’t realise she’s about to die on her feet. Even her most loyal followers like the Philpster now adopt expressions of absence. I’m not really here. You can’t see me. Just close my eyes for 10 minutes and it will be like none of this has really happened. The empty spaces on the opposition backbenches told their own story. There is only so much pain that Tory MPs can manage.
Badenoch was oblivious to all this. Unaware of her own shortcomings. For her, everything is always someone else’s fault. Was the prime minister aware that a family of six Palestinians had been granted citizenship under a law designed for Ukrainians? Starmer was. He too had read the Telegraph front page. He wasn’t sure if the judge had made a bad decision or whether there was a loophole in the law that had been passed by the Conservatives. Either way, he was determined to make sure this wouldn’t happen again.
You really couldn’t get much clearer than this. Starmer had been asked a straight question and had given a straight answer. But this wasn’t in Kemi’s script. She had never knowingly taken yes for an answer. So she had another go. Would Starmer appeal against the decision? This was getting embarrassing. An appeal obviously depended on whether it was the law or the judge that was at fault. But Badenoch still wasn’t satisfied, desperate to prove that Keir was weak on immigration. Most people would be hard pushed to see much difference between Labour and Reform on the issue these days.
It got worse. KemiKaze then accused Starmer of not being on top of his brief. That must have stung, when Keir had said the same of her last week. She made an attack on the attorney general, Richard Hermer. He was just a lefty lawyer who hated Britain. Now Keir had to give the opposition leader a lesson in law 101. If lawyers only represented clients whom they liked then murderers and rapists would be left to cross-examine their victims. Badenoch seemed to think that was an excellent plan. What could go wrong.
Even then we hadn’t hit rock bottom. That came when Kemi recited the Mail front-page story that the chief inspector of borders was working from home in Finland. Starmer sighed. This was getting too easy. He didn’t want to be too patronising but it was hard when you were dealing with an idiot. It had been the Tories who had recruited the inspector and allowed him to work from Finland. Labour had insisted he would have to return to the UK.
Still, Kemi had no idea she had crashed and burned. Only that she had run out of questions. Though the humiliation continued when one of her less intelligent backbenchers brought up the Chagos Islands.
“Er, hello,” said Keir. He had several times offered Kemi a privy council briefing so she could get up to speed with the facts but she still hadn’t accepted the offer. It was as if she was happiest with her prejudices in a state of ignorance. Even the Labour MPs were now watching through their fingers. The entertainment had become a blood sport.
