Both Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham had their tails up at Prime Minister’s Questions today. The two main party leaders are both happy with the way conference season has clarified the dividing lines in politics, and were therefore both content to debate welfare reform, Brexit and defence. They both felt it suited them.
Badenoch also wanted to continue embellishing her portrait of the Prime Minister as someone who shoots from the hip, using her first question to return to his comments on Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. She also pointed to delays on defence funding and welfare reform. Did the Prime Minister ever grow tired of putting his foot in his mouth, she asked. Burnham was more than happy to answer, giving the Commons a little lecture about ‘how I intend to lead this country’. He added: ‘I will draw a line, I will defend our democracy, and I will lead this country forward with positivity, unity and hope in the next decade.’
The Tory leader returned to the Brexit point in her second question, saying it was ‘the first time I have ever heard the head of MI5 slap down a prime minister for doing Russia’s dirty work for them’. This was a reference to Ken McCallum saying he didn’t want to help Russia by overstating the impact of its interference in UK democracy. Burnham didn’t accept her premise, saying Badenoch needed to read what McCallum had said in full and that it was ‘important that we are clear-eyed about what happened in the past’.
Then Badenoch suggested that Burnham was delaying decisions on North Sea drilling, welfare reform and defence spending. The Prime Minister was reasonably confident on all three. He said the delay on the Rosebank and Jackdaw oilfield decisions was because the last Tory government had messed up the process. Then he leant once again on Alan Milburn’s review of young people and benefits to show that he was serious about welfare reform – though the repeated delays to the report’s release don’t suggest that he thinks the topic is that urgent. The Prime Minister’s most comfortable answer, however, came on defence, where he decided to mock the Tory conference proposal for an ‘Iron Dome’-style missile defence system. ‘I recall an interview recently about the Conservatives’ plans for an Iron Dome. And then she said it isn’t our plan. And then it emerged that it was briefed by her team, which doesn’t sound like she’s in control of her own policy on defence.’
There was also a striking moment where the Prime Minister praised Badenoch for being brave and attacking Reform in her conference speech ‘for suggesting that her children weren’t British’. He added: ‘She was brave and she was right to call it out. That is what I want to see more of in the next decade as we go forward.’ It was still sufficiently far from Keir Starmer’s pompous lectures on ‘the spirit in which we do politics’ that it sounded refreshing, rather than tedious. But then again, if Burnham expects to have a decade in which to really answer the questions on welfare reform and defence, he might grow quite tedious too.
Comments