Kemi Badenoch says she met business owners on Friday. One said his business will not exist in four years time because of the government’s policies. Starmer may try to blame his inheritance, or global factors. But why should people trust Starmer over business leaders about the impact of the budget.
Starmer says the global economy is experiencing volatility. And Labour inherited a £22bn black hole, he says.
He says the Tories were not brave enough to take tough decisions. They want the benefits of the budget, but without the costs. They are “economic vandals”, he says.
UPDATE: Badenoch said:
While borrowing costs hit levels not seen since Labour was last in government, I met business owners and their employees in Chesterfield. One of them told me that his business will not exist in four years’ time because of this government’s policies, it might not even exist next year.
The prime minister may try to blame his inheritance, or blame global factors. But why should anyone trust a word he says over the businesses who are saying again and again that his budget means fewer jobs, lower growth and higher borrowing costs?
In response, Starmer said the global economy was experiencing “volatility” and he went on:
We had to deal with the £22bn black hole that they left, made difficult cuts, raised taxes to invest in health, public services and housing, vital to disability, vital to growth, and we’ve got an ironclad commitment to our fiscal rules, and she will welcome, no doubt, the inflation figures from this morning.
But contrast that with the party opposite, they weren’t brave enough in government to take those difficult decisions. They’ve opposed all of our measures to stabilise the economy and promote growth.
They’re back to the magic money tree, she wants all the benefits of the budget, but she can’t say how she’s going to pay for them. They haven’t changed, they’re still economic vandals and fantasists, imagine where we’d be if they were still in charge.
Adam Bienkov from Byline Times has posted on social media a transcript of the exchanges at the post-PMQs Tory briefing where he tried to get Kemi Badenoch’s spokesperson to justify what she said about some of those involved in grooming gangs being “peasants” from “sub-communities” in foreign countries.
Keir Starmer has faced calls from one of his own MPs to meet an election promise to “save” the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland, as it winds down, PA Media reports.
During PMQs Brian Leishman, the Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, told the Commons:
In the general election campaign, Labour leadership promised that if we won, we would step in and save the Grangemouth refinery, retain those jobs and invest in its future. Six months later, this hasn’t happened yet.
If the refinery closes then thousands of jobs will be lost and Scotland’s national security will become massively weaker. Now that we are in power, I know that the government should use it to intervene and save the refinery jobs, protect Scotland and deliver on the promise to build Grangemouth for the future. Will the prime minister do that?
After jeers from the opposition benches, Starmer replied:
This is a really important point because before July, there was no plan at all to support the workers of Grangemouth. Within weeks and importantly we announced a £100m deal for a growth deal and we’re jointly funding Project Willow to find a viable long-term future.
It is a really serious point, I take it very seriously and we’ll do everything we can to make sure that viable long-term future is there for the workers, for their communities and all that rely on it.
Donald Trump’s administration will be consulted before any deal for the UK to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is finalised, Downing Street said.
Speaking at the post-PMQs briefing, the PM’s spokeperson said it was “obviously now right” for Trump’s administration to consider any deal.
But, as PA Media reports, the spokesperson steered away from suggestions Trump would now have a “veto” on the deal, and also said: “It is perfectly reasonable for the new US administration to actually consider the detail and we will obviously have those discussions with them.”
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, advised people to “think differently” about special needs education for children in England, and said the government was considering legislation to increase special needs provision within mainstream schools.
Phillipson told MPs on the education select committee:
This is a complex and challenging area. In terms of the longer term reform that I believe is required, I think it will require all of us to think differently about the kind of system and support that we want for all children – and children with Send [special educational needs and disabilities] have, I believe, been forgotten for far too long.
But Phillipson would not be drawn on addressing the financial pressures facing councils on increasing special needs spending, and the high needs deficits that some have accrued in recent years. A report published today by the Public Accounts Committee called for the government to address the accumulated council deficits by March.
Phillipson did clarify that the government’s new children’s wellbeing and schools bill would not limit teachers’ pay to national scales, as some academies had feared.
Pressed by Patrick Spence, the Conservative MP, over whether schools could offer pay above a teacher’s maximum band, Phillipson replied: “Yes because there will be a floor but no ceiling.”
Here is the PA Media story from PMQs.
Keir Starmer said Rachel Reeves will be chancellor for “many, many years to come”, as he insisted the government cannot “tax our way out” of the problems it faces.
The prime minister offered strong support to Reeves following recent questions over whether her future in No 11 was guaranteed amid high government borrowing costs.
He also sought to dampen talk of an emergency budget after Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch questioned if one was expected.
Badenoch used her questions to suggest Reeves was not qualified to manage the country’s finances and pressed Starmer to rule out any new tax rises this year.
After the Tory leader asked if the country could “afford four more years of his terrible judgments”, Starmer accused Badenoch of serving up a “barrage of complete nonsense”.
Speaking at PMQs, Badenoch opened by asking Starmer why anyone should “trust a word he says” over businesses who were saying “again and again that his budget means fewer jobs, lower growth and higher borrowing costs”.
Starmer said the global economy was experiencing “volatility” which was why he “took the tough and right decisions in the budget to get our finances back in order”.
He told the Commons: “We had to deal with the £22bn black hole that they left, made difficult cuts, raised taxes to invest in health, public services and housing, vital to stability, vital to growth, and we’ve got an ironclad commitment to our fiscal rules, and she will welcome, no doubt, the inflation figures from this morning.
“But contrast that with the party opposite, they weren’t brave enough in government to take those difficult decisions. They’ve opposed all of our measures to stabilise the economy and promote growth.
“They’re back to the magic money tree, she wants all the benefits of the budget, but she can’t say how she’s going to pay for them. They haven’t changed, they’re still economic vandals and fantasists, imagine where we’d be if they were still in charge.”
Badenoch highlighted warnings from the British Retail Consortium about price rises linked to government tax hikes, adding: “The prime inister refused to repeat his chancellor’s promise that she would not come back for more, will he now rule out any new tax rises this year?”
Starmer again defended the government’s budget, before adding: “When it comes to tax, she knows very well the limits of what I can say from this despatch box, but we have an ironclad commitment to our fiscal rules.
“We can’t just tax our way out of the problems that they left us, which is why we put in place tough – they were howling at the spending decisions, they wouldn’t take them, and we’ll stick to those spending decisions and our focus is absolutely on growth.”
Badenoch faced shouts of “shame” from Labour MPs after she said: “At the budget, Labour were congratulating themselves for having the first female chancellor instead of ensuring the country had someone actually qualified to do the job.
“The prime minister claims he has full confidence in the chancellor, but the markets clearly do not. Yesterday, the chancellor repeated her promise to have just one budget per year to provide businesses with certainty.
“The talk in the City is that she can’t meet her fiscal rules, and there will need to be an emergency budget. So does the prime minister stand by the chancellor’s commitment that there will be only one budget this year?”
Starmer replied: “She’ll be pleased to know the chancellor will be in place for many, many years to come. She’ll outstrip that.
“If we all thought that politics was about cheap words, I could criticise their chancellors, but I don’t have enough time to go through all the chancellors that they had.
“We had one budget, that’s what we’re committed to, strong fiscal rules, that’s what we’ll stick to, unlike the party opposite.”
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, has described the fact that Mauritius has still not accepted the UK offer on Chagos Islands sovereignty (see 11.58am) as humiliating for the government. In a statement Patel said:
This is a complete humiliation for Keir Starmer and David Lammy and marks yet another failure of British diplomacy under Labour.
Labour have been desperate to sign off the surrender of the Chagos Islands before President Trump returns to office, and the Mauritius Government know. They see the weakness at the heart of this government and are trying to exploit it by pressuring Britain into paying more for an even weaker lease for the military base at Diego Garcia.
During PMQs Kemi Badenoch said it was wrong to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. (See 12.10pm.) The Conservatives have repeatedly attacked the proposed sovereignty deal with Mauritius since it was announced in October last year, but mostly they have attacked the terms of the deal. Today Badenoch went further, saying any transfer of sovereignty was wrong in principle.
Patel echoed this in her statement. She said:
While Labour have been hiding the details from us, we know they are prepared to blow billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money for the indignity of this dodgy deal, which will undermine our security and defence. It is high time they abandoned it altogether start focusing on how to strengthen our defence capabilities and get the economy growing.
On Monday the Tories claimed that Rachel Reeves’ future was in jeopardy after Keir Starmer declined to say she would stay as chancellor for the rest of this parliament. At the time, I described that as an over-interpretation, and said it would be surprising if Kemi Badenoch were to commit to keeping Mel Stride as shadow chancellor for the whole of this parliament.
But she has. At their post-PMQs briefing, a spokesperson for Badenoch said that Stride would remain shadow chancellor until the next election. Asked if that applied to all members of the shadow cabinet, the spokesperson said “Yes”. He added: “We’re very happy with the shadow cabinet as it is.”
If this really is the position, that means there will be no major shadow cabinet reshuffles between now and the election, expected in 2028 or 2029.
At PMQs the leader of the opposition can either devote all their questions to one topic, go half and half (three questions on one subject, three questions on another – probably the most common approach) or do the full scattergun, trying a bit of everything. There are pluses and minuses either way.
The most memorable, and successful, PMQs for an opposition leader are probably those that are single-theme focused. Badenoch tried one of these last week. But they only work if the PM is particularly vulnerable on a topic, and the opposition leader can “win” convincingly, and that did not happen when Badenoch focused on grooming gangs seven days ago.
The main advantage of going pick ‘n’ mix, as Badenoch did today is that, even if you don’t triumph on every question, you are likely to at least score points on some of them. And, to an extent that happened. If the exchanges had ended after question one, Badenoch might have been declared the winner. This is because she opened with a reasonable point about the impact of the budget, and warned Starmer not to just blame global economic factors or the last government – only for Starmer to do precisely that. I’ve posted the quotes at 12.07pm (although you might need to refresh the page to get the updates to show up).
After that, it started go downhill. Badenoch asked Starmer to rule out future tax rises (which will produce a story for some papers, because he wouldn’t) and condemned the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands (which will also play well with the Tory press). But Starmer has decent responses on both these points, and so these were misses, not hits.
In the final three exchanges, Starmer won quite easily on all of them. It was foolish for Badenoch to attack Rachel Reeves as not qualified to be chancellor, because that is obviously not true. On Tulip Siddiq, Starmer made a very persuasive case that the Priti Patel case proved that the Tories’ record on cases like this was far worse than Labour’s. And, in response to Badenoch’s final question, Starmer came across as much stronger a) because he gave a substantial, newsy answer on Northern Ireland, and b) because he concluded with a jolly take-down of Liz Truss.
I got a letter this week from a Tory voter in a Labour seat. I hope they don’t mind me saying who it was; it was Liz Truss. It wasn’t written in green ink but it might as well have been. She was complaining that saying she had crashed the economy was damaging her reputation. It was actually crashing the economy that damaged her reputation.
So Starmer won on most of the six questions. Just as the advantage of chosing multiple topics is that you might win on at least some, the risk is that the PM will win on more of them.
There is another problem with this strategy too. MPs, and viewers, are left wondering what point you are trying to make. Badenoch tried to sum it up with her final question when she said that Britain could not afford four more year’s for Starmer’s “terrible judgments”. At some point an attack like this might work. But today, particularly after the proceedings beforehand, this just sounded like hyperbole.
Jonathan Brash (Lab) asks about the disappearance of a young child, Katrice Lee, from a military base in Germany in the 1980s. He says his consitutent, Katrice’s father, has been waiting 43 years to get answers.
Starmer says this is a deeply distressing case. He will ensure Brash gets a meeting with a minister to discuss it, he says.
Jack Rankin (Con) asks about the hostages being held by Hamas, and a conversation with the mother of one of them, a British citizen.
Starmer says it is “appalling” that Hamas are continuing to detain these people. “It is nothing short of torture what they are going through”, he says.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Con) asks if Starmer has had a discussion with the lawyer Philippe Sands about the Chagos Islands since becoming PM.
“No,” Starmer replies.
Joe Morris (Lab) raises the murder of Holly Newton and asks if the government will lower the age at which someone can be treated as the victim of domestic abuse.
Starmer says the government does need to look at this. He says he has been shocked by some of the examples of this he has heard about.
Andy McDonald (Lab) asks about gig workers being charged to receive their pay on time. Does the PM agree having a single status of worker will address these abuses?
Starmer says he wants all workers to have proper rights. The employment rights bill will deliver those, he says.
Danny Chambers (Lib Dem) says the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to the emergence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Will the UK help Ukraine deal with this?
Starmer says the UK is funding doctors to work with their Ukrainian counterparts, including on preventing the spread of infections.
Jim Allister (TUV) asks how Starmer hopes to get a trade deal with the US, when Donald Trump dislikes the EU and a deal covering Northern Ireland would involve EU law.
Starmer says the controls only apply to EU goods coming into Britain. They do not apply to good moving between Northern Ireland and Britain, he says.
Davey says he is disappointed by Starmer’s refusal to speed up the care review.
There are reports that some Americans want to come to the UK because they fear what President Trump will do. But some are finding there is no visa they can apply for. Does Starmer agree that if people like this want to come to the UK, to grow our econom, they should be able to?
Starmer says he welcomes all investment into the UK. But the last government lost control of immigration. Badenoch was championing driving up those numbers, he says.
