This car crash was Kemi Badenoch’s worst PMQs yet

In the grand list of appearances by Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions, this was the worst. It was so bad that at one point even Keir Starmer said “this is getting tedious”. It was so grim that even Badenoch’s spokesperson, the person whose job is literally to speak to journalists on her behalf, decided to give the traditional post-PMQs briefing a swerve. It was a disaster.

Badenoch chose to lead on a court ruling that a family of Gaza refugees must be allowed into the UK despite applying through a scheme for Ukrainians (“crazy” – the Daily Mail). “This decision is completely wrong, and cannot be allowed to stand,” said the Conservative leader. “Are the government planning to appeal on any points of law, and, if so, which ones?”.

To which Starmer responded that he did not agree with the decision, that it was “the wrong decision”, that government, not judges, makes immigration policy and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was looking at how this particular legal loophole could be closed. Which seemed a clear enough answer.

But, unfortunately for Badenoch, it was not the one she appeared prepared for. A fashionable phrase to employ about clever politicians is that they are “playing 4D chess”. Were Badenoch to play chess, she would decide her first six moves in advance and then play them regardless of whichever moves her opponent made in between them, because to do so would show weakness. And in this scenario, she had presumably assumed Starmer’s response would be “I won’t answer that because I’m a woke North London lawyer and I don’t want to upset my friends at quinoa parties”.

So on she plodded with her pre-prepared second question. “The prime minister did not answer the question,” she said about a question an entire room of sentient beings had just witnessed the prime minister answering. “We cannot be in a situation where we allow enormous numbers of people to exploit our laws in this way,” she said of a loophole the prime minister had just said his home secretary was closing.

“I have already said that the home secretary has already got her team working on closing this loophole,” said the PM. “We do not need to wait for that; we are getting on with that, because we are taking control.”

Which seemed definitive, but unfortunately Badenoch and her team had prepped a third question based on the assumption Starmer still wouldn’t answer the question and she was going to ask it come what may.

“If the prime minister was on top of his brief, perhaps he would be able to answer some questions,” she said. “Does he agree that we should legislate, even if lawyers warn that that might be incompatible with human rights law?.”

To which a clearly exasperated Starmer responded: “The right honourable lady complains about scripted answers – her script does not allow her to listen to the answer. She asked me if we are going to change the law and close the loophole in question one – I said yes. She asked me again in question two – and I said yes. She asked me again in question three – it is still yes.”

So guess what Badenoch did with her fourth question? Reader: I swear to you I am not making this up.

“The right honourable and learned gentleman did not listen to question one,” she insisted, using the parliamentary terminology reserved for lawyers. “I asked if he would appeal the decision. He did not answer that. He is not listening – he is too busy defending the international human rights law framework.” By this point the prime minister had given up.

But it was the fifth question which was the lid on top of this particular bin fire. The front page of today’s Daily Mail was headlined “Labour’s new borders watchdog will WFH… in Finland!”, a claim that John Tuckett, the government’s preferred candidate, will remain living in the Nordic country.

Badenoch rose. “The government are now recruiting a new chief inspector of borders, who lives in Finland and wants to work from home,” she said. “This is not serious. Why should the British public put up with it?”.

Starmer responded. “The individual in question was appointed in 2019 by the last government to a senior position,” he said. “He then worked for five years from Finland. We have changed that, and he will now be working from the United Kingdom full time. It was Finland under them.”

Kemi Badenoch has a team working beneath her who spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time preparing for prime minister’s questions, her setpiece moment of the parliamentary week. Is it not possible that one of them – just one of them – might have said: “Hmmm. This story seems a little out of the ordinary. Should we not do an independent check on the off-chance that he was employed under the previous government – you know, the one we ran – and was allowed to do so from Finland for fully five years in that time? Otherwise, you know, we run the risk of looking like complete and utter morons?”.

It seems not. Still, all that aside, the embarrassment, the disaster, the spokesperson doing a runner – one person thought Badenoch did a good job at PMQs.

“I asked the Prime Minister to appeal this crazy court decision that allows people from Gaza to use the Ukrainian Family scheme,” she posted on X immediately afterwards. “He repeatedly REFUSED to say whether the govt had or would. This sets a bad precedent – legalism before national interest. He is a lawyer not a leader.”

She thinks she won. She actually thinks she won.