Starmer’s gags fail to save his PMQs

It used to be said that Keir Starmer had a magic lamp, such was his fortune in opposition. If this genie did exist, it has long since crossed the floor. The U-turn on digital ID last night gave Kemi Badenoch yet another stick with which to beat Starmer at today’s session of PMQs. The Tory leader took full advantage of it with relish. ‘Can I start by saying that I welcome the Prime Minister’s U-turn?’, she began. ‘I feel like I say that every week’. Starmer’s response was to seek refuge in humour, deploying a series of gags to mixed effect. ‘They had more positions in 14 years than the Karma Sutra’, he guffawed. ‘No wonder they’re knackered – and they left the country screwed.’

Between that, a gag about the IKEA shadow cabinet and Reform defectors being ‘the second Boriswave’, it all felt a bit decidedly un-Keir. Badenoch, perhaps wisely, opted to ignore such stabs at humour and instead went for the jugular. In the defining moment of the session, she rattled off a list of U-turns while the benches behind her chanted ‘U-turn!’ to every one. Noise is a fascinating barometer of political strength on such occasions: Badenoch’s lines were heard in silence, while Starmer’s retorts failed to quieten the usual hubbub of backbench mutterings.

Such is the shift in political fortunes that Badenoch almost seemed to be sassing Starmer at points. ‘I’m alright!’ she smirked – a reflection in her confidence of her political survival, compared to the floundering premier opposite. Six months ago, such a line might have seemed desperate: in the House today it came across as confident. Starmer declined to say whether he fully understood the impact of the business rates revaluation, instead insisting that: ‘We are turning the country around’. ‘Around and around’, a cynic might argue.

The rest of the session passed off with little in the way of excitement – though Florence Eshalomi raised some eyebrows on the Labour benches for a punchy intervention on leaseholder reform. Multiple questions were asked about Elon Musk’s X and there were the usual jibes at Reform, with Starmer veering between talking up their threat and dismissing them as Tories 2.0. Special mention goes to Lincoln Jopp – dubbed ‘The Colonel’ by colleagues – for his statesmanlike point on antisemitism. Nick Timothy meanwhile enjoyed both question and a hat–tip from Badenoch for his work harrying West Midlands Police for their handling of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football farrago.

Today’s exchange will not live long in the memory, save as a reminder of the long, slow political death of the Prime Minister. Some weeks PMQs is like the Charge of the Light Brigade: all volleys and thunder. This week it was more the steady drip, drip, drip of Starmer’s capital draining away. ‘Authority forgets a dying king’, as Tennyson wrote. With fresh poisonous quotes from the usual Labour insiders already being reported today, expect to see more of the same thing at the same time next week.