Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer has clearly decided that the only way to disagree with Donald Trump and his administration without angering the US President is to make statements that contradict him without ever mentioning him or J.D. Vance by name. Today he opened Prime Minister’s Questions by paying tribute to six young British soldiers who were killed 13 years ago tomorrow in Afghanistan, and a soldier who was killed 18 years ago today in Helmand. He added: These men fought and died for their country, our country, and across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 643 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies. Many more were wounded.

Keir Starmer was careful in his Commons statement about Ukraine to distance himself from what happened in the Oval Office on Friday, while also insisting that Britain needs to maintain a strong relationship with the US. He told MPs that Friday’s public spat between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and JD Vance was ‘something nobody in this house wants to see’, but added: ‘I do want to be crystal clear, we must strengthen our relationship with America – for our security, for our technology, for our trade and investment’. He also repeatedly disagreed with any MP who suggested drawing back from the relationship with Trump.

Keir Starmer today attempted to make the debate about Ukraine’s future one primarily held by Ukraine and European countries. This came after Donald Trump had suggested at the end of last week that it was for the US and Russia to decide. In his press conference after the summit of European leaders in London, the Prime Minister said work was now beginning on a deal to end the war with Russia, led by European countries to then be discussed with the US to ‘take it forward together’.  He also dismissed suggestions that the US was an ‘unreliable ally’, and suggested that America was at least not opposed outright to the UK leading work on a plan for peace.

Amanda Pritchard is resigning as chief executive of NHS England, after three years in the job. Pritchard's announcement, in the last few minutes, is not a huge surprise given there had not been a great deal of confidence among ministers and aides in the leadership of the NHS – though it is worth pointing out that this lack of confidence was not solely focused on Pritchard. Pritchard's departure leaves Streeting and colleagues more exposed Pritchard had been very anxious to show that she was ready and willing to implement the reforms that Labour wanted to introduce, particularly the shift from acute, hospital-based care to preventive and community services.

Does the Labour government still care about mental health? Recently, it dropped its NHS targets for mental health, along with other targets on dementia diagnoses and women’s health. Today at Health questions in the Commons, ministers were confronted about whether they were still committed to improving treatment for mental illness, given the targets are now gone. Stephen Kinnock argued:  ‘What we know about targets is that if you try and overload a system with too many targets, it causes confusion, and you end up with, as she rightly says, perverse outcomes. And so we are very clear that we want to not have a system which is based on just making policy by press release, as was the case under the previous government, putting out press announcements, loads of them, for more targets.

Kemi Badenoch may well have been right in the points that she made at Prime Minister’s Questions, but she managed to go about making them in the wrong way. The Tory leader focused on the many contradictions between the government’s focus on economic growth and its policies, but her phrasing of her questions and her attempts to defend the Conservative legacy made it easy for Keir Starmer to ridicule the questions, rather than answer them. The Prime Minister had also set up a planted question before his exchanges with Badenoch which meant he was already developing a theme about the Tories and the state pension before the leader of the opposition had even stood up.

You could tell from this afternoon’s Education Questions in the Commons that ministers are worried about the row over their school reforms: they’d planted loyal questions from backbenchers to help them fend off criticism. Even before the Conservatives had raised the latest concerns about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, Labour backbencher Luke Akehurst had popped up to ask Bridget Phillipson about child protection. The Education Secretary seized the opportunity to describe the Bill as ‘the single biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation’, adding: ‘That’s why it’s a shame that the Conservative government – the Conservative opposition – have played silly games on this subject.

Kemi Badenoch had her best Prime Minister’s Questions yet today. She alighted on a topic that Keir Starmer really struggled to answer questions on and which should blow up as a row further in the coming weeks. The Tory leader devoted her six questions to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and specifically the reforms that legislation contains on academy freedoms, standards and teacher pay. She called it an ‘act of vandalism that is wrecking a cross party consensus’ by reversing the improvements that led to English school children topping the league tables.

Yvette Cooper has this evening announced that the government will be setting up a public inquiry looking for ‘answers’ on how the Southport attack could have taken place, along with reforms to the Prevent programme. This comes after Axel Rudakubana changed his plea to guilty in his trial for murder and attempted murder. In fact, Cooper has revealed that the government had already commissioned work investigating the failures that allowed the attacker to become so dangerous, but had been unable to publicise it due to the active court proceedings. The Home Secretary’s statement followed Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘leave no stone unturned’ in the pursuit of answers, and includes a list of what the government is now trying to find out, and how.

There will be more inquiries into grooming gangs after all – just not a full public inquiry. Yvette Cooper has just announced in the Commons that there will be five new local inquiries, including one in Oldham which triggered the most recent row on these crimes. The Home Secretary also announced that Louise Casey is going to conduct a rapid review into grooming gangs, looking at the data on these crimes, to see what can be learned at a national level. She told MPs: ‘As well as reviewing past cases we also need much stronger action to uncover the full scale and nature of these crimes... The data on ethnicity of both perpetrators and victims is still inadequate.

Kemi Badenoch continued with her theme of 'why can you trust anything the Prime Minister says' at Prime Minister's Questions today, covering the economy, the Chagos Islands, Tulip Siddiq and Gerry Adams. The Tory leader also claimed that Starmer was once again not answering the questions that she asked, which was true, but his replies were better than her questions.  Starmer said the Conservatives are 'economic vandals and fantasists' Starmer had obviously come armed with the surprisingly good inflation figures, but he also had a number of one liners and attacks that were more effective than those from Badenoch. These included the early description of the Conservatives as 'economic vandals and fantasists', which came in his first answer.