PMQs Review: It was all going so well for Kemi Badenoch

“Tomorrow marks 13 years since six young British soldiers were on patrol in Afghanistan when their vehicle was struck by an explosive, tragically killing them all,” the PM told the chamber, listing them all, along with Benjamin Reddy, a 22-year-old Marine killed in Helmand Province in 2007. “These men fought and died for their country – our country. Across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 642 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies,” said Starmer.

The message was a fairly undisguised rebuke to US vice president JD Vance, who earlier this week appeared to dismiss Britain as a “random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years” and, less directly, Kemi Badenoch, who has insisted that Vance had not made the comments, despite them appearing in an interview on live television widely available for anybody to view.

To be fair to Badenoch, this was one of her better PMQs performances, although it transpires it’s less easy to fall on your face when global politics is dominated by an issue on which pretty much everybody in the Commons – bar five Reform MPs and a rag-tag band of independents – is united. The Conservative leader’s job was to serve up a series of platitudes, and Starmer’s to agree.

Hence Badenoch suggested it would probably be for the best if we didn’t get into an actual full-scale war with Russia and Starmer concurred that “that is the last thing anybody wants to see”. Badenoch said it was in the US’s national interest to provide a security guarantee over Ukraine, and Starmer thought that would be just dandy too. Badenoch asked whether talks on a UK-US trade deal had begun and Starmer said “we did discuss an economic deal”, which is not quite the same thing, but there you go.

In fact, it was only on the final question that Badenoch reverted to type, rather indelicately attempting to connect the UK’s ability to provide security in Ukraine to the government’s decision to impose inheritance tax on family farms. “The world is changing fast and we need an entirely new approach to our economy and our energy security. The Budget last year halted growth with higher taxes and higher borrowing. Yesterday, farmers were protesting in Whitehall again,” she said, apparently making her bid for the All England Non-Sequitur of the Year championship.

“We were doing so well,” said the prime minister, before flipping the switch that says “£22 billion black hole” and heading into more familiar territory. Having played it relatively surefootedly thus far, making your only naked partisan point on the single question to which you don’t get an opportunity to then respond is a rather peculiar move, but then, of course, Badenoch is not very good at this.

Elsewhere, Ed Davey, now revelling in his role as Parliament’s Trump-Hater-in-Chief, asked whether there was a plan B on Ukraine if the White House did not give a sufficient security guarantee (Starmer’s response was a long-winded way of saying “no”) before asking about another pair of deplorables recently decamped to Florida, the Tate brothers. “Given his assessment that President Trump really is a reliable ally, will his government request an urgent extradition of the Tate brothers?,” asked Davey. “I will not go into the details because this is a live case, as he knows,” lawyered Starmer.

Finally, on the same day Rishi Sunak reemerged from his post-Downing Street hibernation to give an interview to the BBC’s Nick Robinson, up popped his erstwhile deputy – and the man said to have had the brainwave for the snap election – Oliver ‘Olive’ Dowden!

The lesser-spotted Dowden had decided that today was the day to ask the prime minister to reverse the government’s decision to impose VAT on private schools, bemoaning “the significant sacrifices” parents had to make to send their children there as well as the knock-on effect for state schools.

“There is no point the Conservatives pretending that they are interested in state education when they left them without the teachers they needed,” responded Starmer, to which shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins audibly shouted “That is a lie!,” causing an almighty kerfuffle (MPs cannot accuse each other of lying in the chamber, unless it’s in a Jacob Rees-Mogg-style ‘lying-down’ way).

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle hadn’t heard it, but bollocked her anyway. “I presume something was said that should not have been said,” he intoned gravely. “I am sure the member would like to withdraw what was said, if they have anything about them.” And with it Hoyle – disciplining someone for something he hadn’t heard them say – became the anti-Badenoch, defending someone for not saying something literally everyone heard them say.