Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer conformed to time-honoured tradition today at Prime Minister’s Questions by producing lots of jokes that would be rejected by a cracker company in their exchanges. The Tory leader’s lines included that the government was full of turkeys, Starmer didn’t have the baubles to stand up to striking doctors, and all Labour MPs wanted for Christmas was a new leader.
Starmer had one decent joke
Starmer had one decent joke that someone else had written for him at the start. As he wished the whole House a happy Christmas, he had some ‘advice’ for Reform UK, which was that ‘if mysterious men from the East appear bearing gifts, this time report it to the police’. Later he suggested that what Sarah Pochin, the Reform MP who complained about overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in adverts, really wanted was a ‘white Christmas’.
It was, though, Badenoch’s first question that contained the sharpest joke, one unrelated to Christmas and actually related to the government’s prowess. She picked up on his session at the Liaison Committee earlier this week where he had complained about the amount of time it took between ‘pulling a lever’ and something happening. ‘He says nothing happens when he pulls the levers. Does he blame himself, or the levers?’ It was delivered well, and to chuckles.
Starmer used his response to confirm something he had struggled with at that Liaison Committee hearing, which is that the government will be setting out its violence against women and girls strategy tomorrow. He then listed other ‘levers’ including 500 jobs protected at Grangemouth, the Erasmus scheme and the Employment Rights Bill. Labour MPs cheered the last two in particular.
Badenoch returned that the answer didn’t have much to do with the question, and moved onto yesterday’s figures showing a rise in unemployment. She asked why it had gone up. Starmer replied that under the Tories joblessness averaged 5.4 per cent, which was higher than it is today (albeit only by 0.3 per cent).
In her subsequent questions, she covered pub closures and Labour MPs being barred from going into the ones that are still open and the striking doctors, though none of her attacks stuck. It was not a particularly spirited performance, unlike last week, but then the final PMQs before Christmas rarely is. Starmer, for his part, burbled on about Tory MPs defecting to Reform, which is something he now leans on in answers to difficult questions almost as much as he does Liz Truss.
An interesting question from the backbenches came right at the end of the session when John Whittingdale told the Prime Minister his forthcoming trip to Beijing should be contingent on the release of Jimmy Lai.
Unsurprisingly, Starmer did not make that commitment, though he criticised the conviction of the pro-democracy campaigner and businessman. His new year will contain many more such questions, but today’s session suggested that both Starmer and Badenoch really are looking forward to a bit of a break.
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