It appears that Kemi Badenoch is a slow learner. The Tory leader has now had three attempts at prime minister’s questions and has yet to make an impact. In fact, most of the damage she has caused has been self-inflicted. Turns out that being shouty and condescending in the Commons doesn’t do you many favours.
Part of the problem is that KemiKaze clearly hasn’t been paying much attention for the last few years. There’s a reason it’s called PMQs. The questions may get asked but they very rarely get answered.
Now that may drive you mad. You may think that makes a mockery of the half-hour session. And you might well be right. Jennie, the guide dog belonging to the Lib Dem MP Steve Darling, has the right attitude. She has taken to wandering along the Lib Dem frontbench, getting strokes from everyone before curling up and going to sleep.
But as leader of the opposition you have to operate within the system. Not get stroppy and sulky when you don’t get your own way. When the prime minister easily dodges what you imagine is a killer line. You have to think your way round your opponent, not keep bludgeoning him.
Then there’s the double-think. Kemi was perfectly fine with PMQs when it was Tory prime ministers doing the avoidance. More than that, she applauded and laughed from her seat on the government frontbench. It’s just in the last few months that she’s been suffering from a sense of humour failure. Permanently angry. Bewildered by the rejection. Keir Starmer, on the other hand, has taken to not answering the questions like a duck to water. He’d never believed running the country could be so much fun.
There’s more to this than pure procedural dynamics, though. Time and again, KemiKaze leaves herself open to comebacks. Hard to believe, I know, as Starmer isn’t someone you would ordinarily identify as quick-witted. But he’s more than a match for Badenoch. There again, on the evidence so far, my dog would come off better than Kemi. Herbert Hound at least has the emotional intelligence required. Before you can really know your enemy, you have to know yourself. And Kemi is a mystery to Kemi.
To be fair, KemiKaze did get off to a decent start. All she did was repeat back Rachel Reeves’s promise to the Confederation of British Industry not to come back for more taxes and ask if Keir would also make that commitment. A fair question. One which Starmer predictably ignored. “It was a once-in-a-generation event. Blah, blah. Twenty-two-billion-pound black hole. Blah, blah. Not going to write budgets for next five years.” The classic non-answer.
Here was where it all seemed to go wrong for Kemi. Because she has no sense of history. At least, no sense of recent history. What happened in the last few days, months, years escape her when she gets ratty.
So after expressing outrage at the lack of response, she had another go. Only this time Keir got personal. Er … had she forgotten that industry had more or less given up on the Tories after 14 years of decline? And hadn’t she also told the CBI that she would not reverse Labour’s national insurance hike on employers? Yet again, she wanted all the nice things but didn’t want to pay for them.
At this point, you could feel the dismay of the Tory backbenches. They had come to believe that Kemi would be their saviour. They had admired what they thought was her strength. But it had only been a facade. There was less to her than met the eye.
Now she just went rogue. Demanded that Keir Starmer accept the results of a petition promoted by Nigel Farage and Elon Musk and graced with more than 2 million signatures. Many of which were likely to be bots.
It was all a bit mad. As if anyone in the country took an online petition calling for the prime minister to resign seriously. The Kemi of 2024 wouldn’t recognise the Kemi of 2019. Back then, when shown a petition demanding the Brexit referendum be overturned, she had declared that the country was run through elections.
Now, not so much. Democracy is a bit overrated these days as far as KemiKaze is concerned. Starmer gently reminded her there had been an election in July and her party had been annihilated. So she should put her feet up and keep quiet. On days like these, he could believe that Badenoch had lost her mind.
By now, Kemi was a misfiring scattergun. Rather than probing the prime minister, constructing a powerful argument against him, she just started saying the first thing that came to mind. First, a convoluted string of biscuit gags featuring the head of McVitie’s.
Then a mention of the Vauxhall plant closure in Luton. This was just too easy for Starmer. Kemi had clocked up £6.7bn of unfunded spending commitments in a month and it had been the Tory government that had imposed the electric vehicle targets. Keep up! He could also have said that Vauxhall had said it was under pressure as a result of Brexit 18 months ago. Only no one talks about Brexit any more.
“Everything is broken,” she concluded. Er … yes. That’s rather the point. Because the Tory party were the ones who broke it. Which is one of the main reasons we have a new government. Starmer rolled his eyes and smiled. It was almost as if Kemi had been given a truth drug and could do no more than read out the charge sheet against her. This was all far too easy for him. Still, he wasn’t complaining.
You’d have thought that after that performance, KemiKaze would have wanted to go and lie down and keep quiet for the rest of the day. Instead, she reappeared later in what appeared to be a hostage video to give a press conference to a handful of journalists.
Her topic was immigration. The figures were going to show a fall for which she wanted to take the credit. But there were still far too many foreigners and she would be reviewing policies to get rid of them. Nothing was off the table. Rwanda, leaving the ECHR, repealing human rights legislation. Anything that might appeal to the right wing of her party.
Standing next to Kemi was the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp. The BBC and Sky had only broadcast Kemi under sufferance and the idea of lingering for the Philpster was too much for both of them. So they cut him off in mid-stream. It was a merciful relief. Nearly everyone had had enough. Over on the Tory YouTube feed there were just 405 people watching. Welcome to the Conservative echo chamber.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally.
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