Isabel Hardman

Prime Minister’s Questions today asked the same question that Katy raised in her magazine cover piece last week: what is the new government’s stance towards China? Oddly, the man asking that question never really answered it himself. Rishi Sunak spent much of his premiership in a semantic quandary over what kind of challenge or threat Beijing posed. Today, he opened by asking whether David Lammy would use his meetings in China this week ‘to condemn China’s dangerous escalatory acts’ in the Taiwan Strait.

Keir Starmer's reset isn't going very well. He turned up at Prime Minister's Questions today clearly hoping to talk about the vision he had for the country, but ended up doing something he always complained about others doing when he was in opposition: dodging the question.  A planted question from a Labour backbencher allowed Starmer to kick off PMQs with some words about changing Britain: 'We were elected to change the country, and that means getting the NHS back on its feet. The Chancellor will have much more to say about that in the budget, about fixing the foundations for our economy so we put money in people's pockets, fix our public services and rebuild Britain.

How long are the Tories going to campaign on the winter fuel payment? It was their main line of attack on Monday at Work and Pensions questions in the House of Commons, with a number of Conservative MPs asking ministers to say how many pensioners were going to die this winter because of the restrictions to the benefit. The Opposition has been dogged in its pursuit of the answer to this particular question, not least because Labour produced its own analysis in 2017 which suggested there would be around 4,000 deaths. It has been the main line of attack for the Conservatives, along with Labour’s freebie culture, since this new government started.

Kemi Badenoch is being followed around the Tory party conference by her own comments about maternity pay. She had to explain what she was on about again when she had her main stage interview in the Birmingham hall this afternoon, telling Chris Hope that ‘I think maternity pay is quite important’, and that she was ‘answering a different question’ about business regulation. She then compared the row to the way Margaret Thatcher’s Women’s Own magazine comments about ‘there is no such thing as society’ were ‘cut down into a soundbite that was used to attack her’. She added: When you are a leader, when you are a conservative, when you are making the argument for conservative principles, your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else.

The first row of Tory conference has, unsurprisingly, involved Kemi Badenoch. The leadership contender was on Times Radio this morning where she was making a point about business regulation and ended up suggesting that maternity pay in this country was ‘excessive’. Here is a transcript of her exchange with Kate McCann: KM: Do you think we’ve got the right levels of maternity pay at the moment? KB: So, maternity pay varies depending on who you work for, but it is a function, whereas statutory maternity pay, it is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working, we are taking from one group of people and giving to another, this in my view is excessive.

Keir Starmer has moved on rather quickly from Labour conference, pitching up in New York to tell Israel that it can use ‘no more excuses’ and must allow more aid into Gaza. In his speech to the UN General Assembly, the Prime Minister also called for an immediate ceasefire, and said there needed to be a ‘credible and irreversible path to a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure state of Israel’. He added: ‘That is the only way to provide security and justice to both Israelis and Palestinians.’ He also turned on Russia, saying he didn’t know how the country could ‘show its face in the building’.