This was Badenoch’s best PMQs yet

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. 

What was interesting was that while the Prime Minister repeatedly insisted throughout the session that his party had set up academies and that they were here to stay, he did not specifically defend the measures Badenoch was attacking. Instead, he diverted attention to other reforms in the Bill, saying it had ‘important provisions for protecting children’, and complained that Badenoch had instructed her party to vote against them.