“Jim Hacker: ‘Well, opposition is about asking awkward questions’
Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘Yes and Government is about not answering them’”
The verdict wasn’t universal but it was damning.
After the PMQs of Wednesday 12th of February the Westminster media bubble concluded that Badenoch had bombed, again. Starmer had won 6-0 and worried MPs whispered in my ear that she was in danger.
In my experience any leader is at risk over recess, as their parliamentary ‘colleagues’ start working each other up in WhatsApp groups and nervously assess their own majorities.
“She’s dreadful at it. Real disappointment given the promise of previous dispatch box maulings she’s handed out”
“If it doesn’t get better after recess the knives are coming out”
“Starmer’s such a smug boor, how is she missing the chance to land punches and walks into them instead?”
That’s just a selection of critique’s I received from Tory MPs, over recess, on the subject.
Now Tory MP’s, are a febrile and flappy bunch at the best of times – sorry folks but it’s true and I have twenty years’ experience of watching and knowing you – but I couldn’t ignore the tone of those messages.
However after this week’s PMQs I am going to don a metaphorical wig and gown and enter the court, for the defence – for defence there most certainly is.
“But Giles the evidence is clearly there!”
That’s what her critics will be saying, and they exist, in number, let’s not deny it – including some in my own ConHome camp. Yes, William I am looking at you (much as we’ll genuinely miss you when you leave us). The sharpest critique I hear is not from those who were never fans, but those who signed up to Renewal 2030 but now privately wonder, to the likes of me, why the ‘crackle of electricity’ they were told she has, has not yet crackled enough.
Well OK I see the challenge. I’ll take it on and make the counter case.
Is Kemi nailing PMQs every week? No.
I’m not going that far.
She and her team know she can and must get better at leaving the script to drop in a pithy put down, or smack him back, off-the-cuff, which is best as he won’t have prepped for it. She mustn’t be cowed by the braying minions behind him who will later stand up and read, mark you read, pre-prepped versions of:
“Does the Prime Minister agree with me that he’s utterly amazing, we’re lucky to have him, and please grace us with his munificence in my constituency”
I hate it when any side does that. Lazy, weak, and deeply unimpressive.
For Kemi Badenoch getting to grips with all of this will come from building confidence over time. Plenty of her predecessors found their feet slower than she is doing, and there really is no proper rehearsal for being at the sharp end of these exchanges. The Tories haven’t – despite their recent habits – just elected a Tory Prime Minister to run things on day one – they elected a leader of the opposition. Cameron had a good day one at PMQs in 2005 – it still took him time to get back to that strong start afterwards.
But there’s a far better reason I think she doesn’t deserve the intensity of criticism she’s had.
When, this week, Sir Keir airily sneered she had ‘not been in his thoughts’ over defence spending changes – changes the Tories have spent months urging him to commit to, sooner – would I have like a counter jibe?
In the words of Ed Miliband – Hell yes.
“If I wasn’t in his thoughts over such a serious issue, that’s one thing – the problem the whole House has, is the concern he isn’t in the US President’s thoughts on anything” – might have been an acceptable block or touché even if subsequently his trip to Washington goes well.
But fussing over the repartee is actually to miss the whole point of PMQs.
It’s purpose to The Opposition is not a weekly joust to deliver drollery to the sketch writers in the gallery above, or ‘bon mots’ for Westminster-bubble dinners. When John Crace of the Guardian tickles lefty tummies with his go-to-gag of ‘Kemi-kaze’, he’s showing off to those Guardian readers for whom he is contractually obliged to trash Tories. Two cheers for him and them.
PMQs, with it’s combative theatre might seem to be a competition for ‘who’s the smartest Alec in the room‘ but actually – it isn’t. That’s the dressing, if you want it.
The purpose for opposing parties is to ask a Prime Minister questions they hoped you wouldn’t ask and they cannot, won’t – or best, don’t even know how to – answer.
On this basis Starmer is truly terrible.
This week the paid observers of the weekly fray actually started to pick this up. The ‘cut-through’ the critics whine about was achieved. Three cheers for the scribblers – at last.
The week everyone got most upset about – and I got that WhatsApp tsunami – Kemi Badenoch asked, if the PM disagreed with a court ruling over a Gazan family granted entry to the UK, what could or would he do about it? The answer he didn’t give – is nothing.
It was the right question and at ConHome we published a very detailed explanation as to why. It was the sort of case any lifetime-lawyer like Sir Keir could understand.
This week, hiding once again behind his mythical £22bn black hole – a number only he and the head-of-customer-services at the Treasury accept as real – he was hazier than a February fog about whether, as asked, his Chagos deal will be paid for by his new found enthusiasm for extended defence spending. This is really important now that Donald Trump has signalled he may back it. A definite win for Starmer on that score. Not so great for taxpayers.
The line Kemi did deliver well – and was picked up, because it’s true – was
“Someone needs to tell the Prime Minister that being patronising is not a substitute for answering questions”
And he doesn’t answer questions. Look at the evidence.
She’s tested his claim that he is in the service of country not party, over grooming gangs, where a refusal for a national inquiry looked very much like protecting members of his party and not the child victims. There is to be no national inquiry.
She targeted the education bill, as ‘educational vandalism’ and, despite adenoidal bluster from their dear leader, Labour have indeed amended the bill on the specific point raised.
On energy security, the media said she bombed and a day later she was backed by an industry expert who said Labours plans risked ‘economic disaster’.
Now, can you do all this questioning with more flair and panache? Of course, but asking the right questions without cheering crowds is the more important part of the equation unless of course performing seals has become our new benchmark and hang the detail.
Starmer and Labour are vulnerable.
They started badly and they have not yet turned that around.
The confidence that comes with repeating PMQs is there to be gained for Kemi Badenoch but asking difficult questions that expose a lack of answers – or ones that can’t survive the merest post PMQs scrutiny – I would contend is the more important skill.
Finally, it is oft cited that William Hague, a master of the slick repartee that made Blair fear their PMQs encounters, did not benefit electorally from being whip quick with the words.
Has she got the right idea, first? Yes. Does she have time and room to improve? If you believe another bout of infighting and regicide is political insanity then, again, yes. If I had one warning, it is not these PMQs gripes I’d be worried about. Points I will put to Kemi Badenoch herself next time we meet and publish here.
In the meantime let Starmer think he’s winning each Wednesday. The unanswered questions when finally revealed, will make him look shifty, evasive and arrogant throughout the times he thought he was being clever, righteous and safe. Badenoch can always return to the crash site to remind him how he handled it. Perhaps next week she should list all the questions he still hasn’t answered.
The only words of wisdom on what to improve – would be to enlist the help of those with wisdom, who’ve helped before, with the words.