The Commons laughs at Badenoch and Brexit

It’s taken six weeks, several leaden gags and a whole heap of open goals but today at PMQs Kemi Badenoch got what all opposition leaders yearn for: a thoroughly hearty, across-the-House laugh. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t intended.

Laying into Keir Starmer for raising hopes but breaking promises, she added: “And now we learn that he is about to give away our hard-won Brexit freedoms.” The uproar was deafening. Not murmuring, nor even chuntering, but proper, full-throated laughter from every corner of the chamber that wasn’t Conservative or Reform (even Hansard reports it, albeit it as “interruption”).

Our hard-won Brexit freedoms! On the same day that a report from researchers at the London School of Economics found the damage from Brexit to trade links with the EU cost the UK £27bn in the first two years! She may as well have nabbed the line from a Christmas cracker.

This was another poor performance by Badenoch on a day when Starmer should have been there for the taking, having campaigned for the so-called Waspi women, posed for pictures with many of them and described their plight as a “huge injustice”, but this week found that compensating them would cost a lot of money and therefore couldn’t be done. Whoops! But Badenoch couldn’t focus on that because, as she acknowledged, she’d have done exactly the same thing.

“For years, the prime minister and his cabinet played politics with the Waspi women – the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign,” she declared solemnly. “The deputy prime minister said the Conservatives were stealing their pensions. She promised to compensate them in full – another broken promise. Now, they admit that we were right all along.”

In politics, ‘the other party have done a terrible thing we were denied the opportunity to do’ isn’t a great winning line. According to new YouGov polling, just 13% of people think Badenoch looks like a prime minister in waiting, and it’s unclear exactly what that 13% have been watching. As, even after this misstep, she then compounded it by switching to an entirely different topic within the very same question.

“But let us ask about another group of pensioners whose trust was broken. Since the chancellor cut winter fuel payments, how many extra people have applied for pension credit?” she asked. Not only was this clunky, but it effectively gave Starmer a pass: he could avoid the Waspi women, pivot to pensions and bring up an unfortunate comment shadow chancellor Mel Stride had made about the pension triple lock being “unsustainable” (Stride – the man dumped out of the Conservative leadership race before he’d even held his launch event – has since clarified he meant “in the very, very long term”).

All in all, it was another poor PMQs by Badenoch, skipping from issue to issue and failing to land much of a jab on Starmer, then finally, and not that topically, riffing on new year’s resolutions. “If he is looking for a new year’s resolution, why does he not start with telling the truth?” she demanded. “I’ll do it now,” said Starmer, rattling off a list of failures of the last Tory government beginning with, yes, that bloody £22bn black hole.

It was a bit of a Christmas present to Starmer because, as non-Conservative MPs who could go in hard on the Waspi women showed, he didn’t have much of an answer. A Plaid Cymru MP called Ben Lake and Ian Byrne, a Labour member currently stripped of the whip, elicited the same stock answer from him, but it was Diane Abbott, no friend of Starmer, who caused him to drop his voice an octave like a chastened schoolboy.

“The Waspi women fought one of the most sustained and passionate campaigns for justice that I can remember, year-in year out, and we did promise them that we would give them justice,” she said. “I understand the issue of the cost, but does the prime minister really understand how let down they feel today?”.

“I do understand the concern, of course I do,” said Starmer. “I have set out the history, but the research findings make it clear that 90% of those impacted did know about the change. In those circumstances the taxpayer simply cannot afford the burden of tens of billions of pounds of compensation, but, as I have said, I do understand the concern.” So, er, that’s alright then.

So that’s the final prime minister’s questions of the year. And like all of them, we were reminded of the absolute absurdity of it. Two Labour MPs rose during the session to make a specific request of the PM. Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) just wanted the one thing: world peace.

“What is the prime minister’s resolution to work with others for a more peaceful world in 2025?” she asked. Starmer made no promises.

Amanda Morton (Portsmouth North), on the other hand, had a slightly more mundane dream: a plaque on the door of former prime minister James Callaghan’s home.

At least one of these women is going to be severely disappointed next year.