Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer has been quite an irritable – and irritating at times – performer in the Commons as prime minister. His sessions with Kemi Badenoch in particular have been marked by pompous lectures about how she should be conducting Prime Minister's Questions, along with lofty comments about the ‘spirit in which’ the opposition has been behaving. Starmer hasn't seen anything wrong with this attitude because he made the fatal mistake early on of buying his own hype about what a committed and decent public servant he is, rather than being anxious about whether he was actually meeting his own standards. This means that he seems genuinely appalled by any question that suggests he is in fact not meeting those standards.

It's difficult for an outgoing Prime Minister to mess up their valedictory PMQs: there is always more goodwill in the Chamber on those occasions than at any other time in the parliamentary calendar. Keir Starmer managed a dignified and emotional departure today, and was helped along by an upbeat and relatively friendly Kemi Badenoch, who alternated between jokes and comments that came painfully close to being compliments.

Now that he’s officially the Prime Minister in waiting, Andy Burnham is trying to work out how to stop Labour MPs from turning against him in the same way they turned against Keir Starmer. He’s got a letter from nearly 80 backbenchers calling on him to ‘refresh’ the party’s immigration policy, and he has already apologised for the party’s stance on Gaza. Burnham said yesterday: ‘I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza my party didn’t get it right and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better.

By the end of this year, Britain will have had (at least) seven prime ministers in the past decade – and more than 700 recommendations on how to stop the ongoing scandal in NHS maternity services. None of which have – as yet – been implemented. The Ockenden review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which was published on Wednesday, adds nearly 100 more. There are many harrowing stories in the report. But one of the most telling is about what was going on above the wards Its findings are appalling and yet familiar, which Donna Ockenden, a senior midwife, knows better than most, given this is the third review she has published on NHS hospitals failing mothers and babies.

Keir Starmer looked visibly emotional as he walked up to the lectern in Downing Street this morning. The Prime Minister then held it together for the majority of his resignation speech – until the very end where he paid tribute to his ‘fantastic wife Vic’ and his ‘beautiful children who are my pride and joy’. It’s difficult for Starmer to say that he led with good grace It’s not unusual for anyone to grow emotional while talking about their family, but it was quite telling that this was the only point where Starmer visibly struggled: even those who have worked closely with him have struggled to work out what really animates him beyond family and football.

Voters in Makerfield haven’t even gone to the polling stations, but already the Labour leadership contest is well into a detailed exposition of what Andy Burnham – rather than any of the other contenders – might do. A few ‘star’ new MPs had been promoted straight into government, but the rest hadn’t had an invite to Downing Street Defence spending, welfare cuts, social care, immigration and the EU are all matters Burnham has pronounced on – and then changed his stance. The problem with WWAD (What Would Andy Do?), as the bracelets for Labour’s messiah might read, is that the answer really depends on the weather.

‘Corridor care’ should be an oxymoron, but is instead such a feature of the NHS now that nearly 3,000 people a day found themselves being treated in corridors, cupboards or even car parks last month. New figures show that 2,241 patients a day on average who had corridor care while in A&E, with a further 669 being cared for in cupboards, toilets and car parks. These are the latest official figures which show how the NHS isn’t working – but earlier in the week the Royal College of Emergency Medicine came up with its own estimate of how many people were dying unnecessarily as a result of long A&E waits: 1,300 a month.

Keir Starmer is using this morning’s cabinet meeting to underline the message he has been sending to more junior ministers over the past few days: he’s not going without a fight. Part of his argument is that he’s got loads to do, which must come as a surprise to anyone who read the King’s Speech. One of the big things Starmer wants to show his party he can do is address the hot-button issue of children’s access to social media, first with his threat to tech firms yesterday that they have three months to stop children being able to send or see explicit content.

Andy Burnham finally confirmed last night that he is indeed standing for the Labour leadership – just in case anyone was confused about what the Mayor of Greater Manchester is up to as he stands in the Makerfield by-election. Speaking on BBC Question Time, Burnham said: I'm not somebody who gets ahead of myself. I can't do anything unless I'm lucky enough to get the support of people here. But if I get your support, I would seek to represent you at the highest possible level and give this constituency maximum power and influence. I think Wes Streeting seems to have launched a leadership contest, so if that is running, I would seek to join it.

We have now reached the stage of political debate around Henry Nowak’s murder where politicians are talking more about tone policing than they are about actual policing. Keir Starmer has today condemned Elon Musk for ‘interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division – that’s not who we are in Britain’. He added that: ‘When we have a terrible case like Henry’s case, Henry Nowak, we react calmly, as his family have done.’ It is important for politicians to push back against attempts to create further division in society: part of the role of a political leader is to lead on the standard of debate, as well as the content.

Kemi Badenoch clearly decided that it would be difficult to call for calm around the Henry Nowak case, and then to spend Prime Minister’s Questions talking about it at length. The format of the session rarely lends itself to calm, and she had rightly judged that others – including Nigel Farage – would bring the matter up themselves. Instead, the Tory leader did what Keir Starmer did when he answered his first question, which was to call for calm. And then she moved onto welfare spending, using Pat McFadden’s private message to Lord Mandelson as an opportunity to revisit Labour’s failure to reform benefits. But Nowak still dominated the session, and not just in the questions.

It’s refreshing that social care has become a topic over which the putative Labour leadership contenders are prepared to scrap, given how neglected it has been for decades now. Both Andy. Burnham and Wes Streeting want to argue that they would be the leader who would take the radical step of legislating for a National Care Service – something Burnham first proposed back in 2009, just to give you an idea of how long it is taking for anyone to do anything meaningful on this matter. The babies born in the year Burnham unveiled his green paper on adult social care can now drive cars, but they still have no prospect of their grandparents, or indeed parents, being able to access a care system that actually works and is funded properly.