Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated.
‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming.
She boasted that Starmer had made an embarrassing admission by failing to endorse Reeves’s pledge. Well, sort of. She then quoted the PMI index and asked why business confidence is crashing. Sir Keir ignored this and brought up to Kemi’s loose remark two weeks ago when she endorsed Labour’s investment pledges.
Other backbenchers did her job far better
‘They haven’t got a clue what they’re doing,’ said Sir Keir.
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