Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer clearly didn’t spend their summer breaks working on their performances at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today’s exchanges between the two leaders fell quickly into the usual meandering grudge match of accusations about blowing up and running down the economy, and ministers resigning or not resigning. Each question was ostensibly about the economy but included a barb about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs, and each answer offered a rambling defence of Labour’s policies, the standard criticism of Tory mess and a defence of Rayner. We learned very little, and Starmer was neither under pressure nor impressive.

Will Keir Starmer’s mini-reshuffle of ministers and key aides solve the Prime Minister’s problems? The Prime Minister has moved Darren Jones from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office in a change widely interpreted as an attempt to sideline Rachel Reeves and boost the government’s ability to deliver on its reforms. Jones was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, but his new Chief Secretary role is designed to ‘drive forward progress in key policy areas’. It is a response to Starmer’s growing frustration that the Whitehall machine isn’t moving fast enough to deliver his reforms.

Keir Starmer joked at Prime Minister’s Questions today that Tory MPs seemed to be on recess already. But he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either, giving automated answers to Kemi Badenoch’s questions about tax and the economy. Having complained volubly about prime ministers not answering the questions he asked as leader of the opposition, he now has a stock set of his own personal flannels with which to dodge giving real answers as Prime Minister.

If he were measuring his success at Prime Minister’s Questions purely by avoiding making any senior colleagues cry, Keir Starmer had a reasonably good session today. Rachel Reeves was beaming on the front bench, and next to her Yvette Cooper was joining in with the smiling too. It was the same level of smiling sincerity as you might see at an overlong secondary school piano recital, but the Prime Minister can probably take that as a win. He repeatedly spoke over his shoulder to Reeves, partly to show they were indeed in ‘lockstep’, but also presumably so he could check that she was still grinning.

Given we have known for a good while that Labour thinks the way to save the health service is to move care out of hospitals and into the community, you might have expected today’s NHS ten-year plan to explain how the government is going to do that. The preventive agenda is not a new idea that needs explaining, it’s been around for the entire 77-year history of the health service. The problem, therefore, is not the lack of an idea, it’s that reform never actually happens. The important and urgent priorities of waiting lists and emergency units always end up dominating, and the neighbourhood health centres, walk-in clinics, polyclinics or the ‘health centres’ set out in Labour’s original plan for the NHS under Nye Bevan, end up coming a distant second, if at all.

What do we really need to change about the NHS? Later this week we will finally get the NHS plan from Health Secretary Wes Streeting which, like all the other big reforms before, promises to make the health service fit for the future and focused on patients. Streeting has been more articulate than many previous ministers about the failings of the current setup, saying the NHS today is often organised around the needs of the system, rather than the people it is meant to serve. One of the most pernicious aspects of this is the way the health service deals with mistakes. Streeting has already trailed ‘pioneering AI technology’ in the new plan which he says will ‘rapidly analyses healthcare data and ring the alarm bell on emerging safety issues’.

Liz Kendall tried to use her Commons statement on the government’s U-turn on some of the disability benefit cuts to persuade her colleagues that the changes made the legislation worth supporting. Not all of them sounded very convinced: there were repeated complaints about a ‘two-tier system’ whereby two people with the same needs would get completely different levels of support. MPs were also concerned they were signing ‘blank cheques’ by voting on the bill tomorrow when full details of the changes won’t be available until later in the year. And there were suspicions that the changes won’t be as meaningful as ministers have suggested.

Wes Streeting has announced yet another inquiry into NHS maternity safety: this time a national investigation which the Health Secretary wants to address ‘systemic problems dating back over 15 years.’ This rapid review, modelled on the Darzi review of the NHS, will report in December 2025 and will work across the entire maternity system, using the findings of previous reviews and urgently examining the ten worst-performing maternity services in the country.

MPs are coming to the end of the assisted dying debate. The speeches can be roughly divided into the following camps: those who, like the Bill’s sponsor Kim Leadbeater, are very much in favour of the Bill and confident in its drafting; those who are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but who are so concerned about the drafting of the Bill that they are opposed to it; and the implacable opponents to the principle. The speeches from the latter two camps largely focused on the argument that today’s vote is not about the principle of assisted dying but about the Bill as it stands. The proponents of the legislation, though, have largely focused on the need to back assisted dying as a principle.

This evening, the Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has resigned as a government whip over the disability benefit cuts. In a letter to Keir Starmer, she writes that she is quitting the frontbench 'with a heavy heart', adding: Foxcroft's resignation suggests that the rebellion over disability benefit cuts really is quite serious I have wrestled with whether I should resign or remain in the government and fight for change from within. Sadly it now seems that we are not going to get the changes I desperately wanted to see. I therefore tender my resignation as I know I will not be able to do the job that is required or me and whip – or indeed vote – for reforms which include cuts to disabled people's finances.