How Badenoch is making winning PMQs a habit

“Today has been fun,” one shadow cabinet minister said to me, beaming as they walked through Parliament. Another joyfully added: “I am so so enjoying it.”

It must have showed on my face too as, watching PMQs from the press gallery – where Kemi Badenoch had Sir Keir Starmer on the ropes over his dysfunctional No.10 – I got messages from various Tory MPs, including one who simply sent: “Having fun?!”

For the Labour government is happily ripping itself to shreds, and Badenoch seemed to be enjoying every second of it with a new found confidence.

“The toughest thing at the start was the government had no record to attack,” a source involved in Badenoch’s PMQs prep said. “For all Kemi’s successes in Business and Trade and on sex and gender, she had the baggage of our 14 years in government that Starmer could, and did, throw at her. Now the tables have flipped.”

A shadow cabinet minister added: “She seems more relaxed and comfortable – she knows herself and has a lot of energy… Kemi is quietly, determinedly professionalising the operation and getting stronger each day.

“She ain’t Blair or Cameron but she does grip things and she knows her mind.”

Now the Labour Party is presenting plenty of material. Two nights ago the Labour “civil war” briefings, as Badenoch put it, came thick and fast – to The Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg – all from No.10 sources maintaining that Starmer would see off any leadership challenge – and actively accusing cabinet ministers, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabhana Mahmood, of being on manoeuvres and jostling for the top job behind the scenes. Two weeks before the budget – putting potential political gains over market confidence.

If the intention of these Downing Street sources were to put these rumours to bed by forcing the likes of Streeting and Mahmood into publicly backing the Prime Minister, then they have failed, quite spectacularly failing to secure political gains. 

The Health Secretary had the pleasure of taking yesterday’s morning round and did so with a fair amount of gusto – comparing those making the briefings to Traitors as in the BBC series, and even going as far as to say they should get the sack for speaking against their own cabinet ministers. But it also flags the poor thinking of whomever (Morgan McSweeney, I’m looking at you…) gave such briefings. Who would have thought that Streeting, one of Labour’s best communicators, may come out of a difficult broadcast round rather well – casually batting away accusations, while backing the PM and disowning the No10 sources who kicked off such a fuss. 

It is what has prompted accusations of extreme 4D chess, which one Labour minister yesterday flagged to me as a possibility. It is not impossible – McSweeney helping Streeting to get Starmer out – either way, whatever the intent, it makes the party look messy.

Streeting was not to be seen at PMQs, apparently in Manchester for departmental reasons, but his presence was felt. When Badenoch forced Starmer to explain his absence in the Commons, a whitty Tory MP heckled: “Is he going to be visiting Andy Burnham while he is up in Manchester?”

The source involved in the Tories PMQs prep added that the Labour leader is not being as adaptive: “Starmer can’t think on his feet and instead he’s reduced to reeling off the same statistics that no one is buying. Labour have squandered their political capital and it’s only going to get worse from here. Kemi can sense that his backbenches are getting less and less supportive, and the more morose the Labour MPs look, the more she wants to bring them into the session and highlight Starmer’s weakness.”

Even backbench Labour MPs who usually are not Streeting’s natural fans or bedfellows have had supportive words to say after his defensive performance yesterday. For Starmer and his No.10 operation, however, they did not quite receive the same reaction – and Badenoch could sense it.

The additional problem for Labour, as it always ends up being, is that the issue is far broader than just Streeting and Mahmood – and this is true in two senses.

They are not the only Labour MPs with leadership ambitions, not by half. The left of the party wouldn’t be represented by either appointment so names come up like Angela Rayner, who was forced to resign from being Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary over her tax issues, Bridget Phillipson, who is destroying private schools and refusing to ban damaging phones from schools, Louise Haigh, another Labour MP forced out of their cabinet job over a fraud offence.

The second issue is that Starmer, with no control over his No.10 operation who, according to him, are making rogue briefings, and no control over the depressed feelings of his likely one-term backbench MPs, has little to offer.

One shadow cabinet minister tells me: “At least with Boris, whether it was wallpaper or something else, and our MPs were doubting him, he would at least come out with a barnstoming performance and we’d think ‘Oh, he’s still got something in him’. Stamer, he only seems to get worse! Their faces were all so flat.”

But one Tory shadow minister still thinks Badenoch needs to harness a killer instinct. “She could have killed McSweeney,” they told me, “she should have stayed on the Whitehall war rather than pivoting”.

“She won the set, fair enough, but she could have done serious damage.”

The Tory leader may have done enough work, however, with Labour MPs also now piling the pressure on Starmer to sack his chief of staff.

As another lobby journalist put it succinctly: “Everything is f***ed.” It is Badenoch and the Tories time to make the most of it and keep the momentum going.