Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch has become fixated on accusing Keir Starmer of not telling the truth at Prime Minister’s Questions, to the extent that she is neglecting to push him on individual issues. The Tory leader merely used the winter fuel payment, the impact of national insurance hikes on charities and hospices, and Brexit as devices for her grand theme of the Prime Minister not answering the question and not telling the truth. It would have been better to hammer away at one topic to make Starmer uncomfortable, rather than allowing him to do the thing that Badenoch was complaining about: dodging the issue. The Leader of the Opposition started off by complaining about the Waspi women. She then performed an uncomfortable handbrake turn and asked about ‘another group of pensioners’.

The threatened Commons drama of an MP using parliamentary privilege to name the alleged Chinese spy was dampened rather after the High Court lifted the anonymity order on Yang Tengbo. It meant the urgent question (UQ) in the Chamber this afternoon ended up being much more about the UK government’s attitude towards China generally – which made it a much more useful session than if everyone had been craning their necks to see which maverick MP was going to stand up and name ‘H6’. The urgent question came from Iain Duncan Smith, who got a scolding from the Speaker for telling the press he was tabling it. Mind you, Lindsay Hoyle also made clear his displeasure with ministers for not giving a statement on the matter, so no one was in his good books today.

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch had quite an angry clash at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. The Tory leader attacked on immigration, something Starmer had previously mocked her for avoiding. The questions and answers quickly descended into a bit of a grudge match about who actually cared about it. Badenoch’s first question was why immigration had not been named as a priority when Starmer ‘relaunched yet again’ last week. Starmer immediately crowed that ‘now she wants to talk about immigration’, accusing the Conservatives of a ‘one nation experiment in open borders’.

Is the fall of Bashar al-Assad really cause for celebration in Syria and across the world? UK government politicians have been trying to separate the relief of the dictator’s departure from any sense of celebration about what comes after. This afternoon in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Assad was a ‘monster’, a ‘dictator’ and a ‘butcher’ and that his downfall was a humiliation for Russia and Iran who supported him.  Lammy also argued that the UK government had been right to refuse to re-engage with the Syrian regime under Assad.  This government chose not to re-engage. We said no, because Assad is a monster.

Justin Welby has given his valedictory speech in the House of Lords, his first public remarks since his resignation. It was quite a sad speech in which the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t appear to know quite what he wanted to say about his own departure. He started by joking that ‘if you want to make God laugh, make plans’, then added: ‘Well, on that basis, next year, I will be causing God more hilarity than anyone else for many years, because the plans for next year were very detailed and extensive.’ He told peers: The reality is that there comes a time if you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility, where the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll.

The debate on assisted dying, which culminated in a victory for those in favour, hasn't been long enough – we knew that from the start – but it has been a very good one. There have been some very powerful arguments on both sides. There has also been a division between those who think that voting for the legislation at this stage is merely a qualified agreement to let it receive further scrutiny, and those who see it as an endorsement, both of the principle and of the detail.  A number of MPs who spoke in favour, including David Davis and Liz Saville-Roberts, nonetheless raised concerns with the drafting, with the latter saying she would vote against the bill at later stages if it did not receive the length of debate and scrutiny that it still deserved.

Normally when MPs criticise the uncertainty around the government’s relationship with another country, they are referring to the constant chopping and changing around how to engage with China, not Israel. But where the UK stands on both countries is in flux at the moment, and today’s Foreign Office Questions in the Commons didn’t help much either. Priti Patel, who is now the shadow foreign secretary, used China as her main line of attack at topical questions, claiming that the current iteration of relations ‘appears to be all give and no take’.

Angela Rayner was so keen to get out of the traps with her criticism of the last Conservative government at today’s deputy prime minister’s questions that she almost forgot to welcome her new sparring partner. Alex Burghart is not yet a household name: in fact, he isn’t even Rayner’s direct counterpart, as Kemi Badenoch hasn’t yet named a deputy. He had a reasonable session, and even made a stab at doing something no-one else has yet managed, which is to define ‘Starmerism’. Rayner enjoyed herself, as ever, while Rachel Reeves, sitting next to her on the government benches, had the most uncomfortable session.