New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was so incompetent at her first Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), she almost made Keir Starmer look good.
A poll from YouGov conducted in the week before July’s election found 48% of people voting Labour were doing so tactically to get the Tories out. That’s compared to 13% who voted for ‘change’, 5% for policies, 4% for the NHS and just 1% because of Starmer’s leadership.
With the debut of Badenoch at PMQs, the Tories appear to be attempting to make the anti-Tory vote strong again. That’s tongue in cheek, but with the Labour right in control of the opposing party, it functions to keep the country on an overall right-wing footing.
Badenoch’s abysmal PMQs performance
At PMQs, Badenoch managed to make Starmer look almost palatable. She got fully behind newly-elected US president Donald Trump:
Given that most of his cabinet signed a motion to ban president Trump from addressing parliament… Will the prime minister show that he and his government can be more than student politicians by asking…the speaker to extend an invitation to president Trump to address parliament on his next visit?
Then she carried on with outright lies:
His Chancellor’s budget did not even mention defence
But that’s not true, the Budget mentioned defence multiple times. Both Labour and Conservatives are committed to spending 2.5% of GDP on the military, with the UK already spending 2.2%. This is around double what most European countries spend on the military.
After that, Badenoch showed quite the lack of self-awareness:
His scripted lines are showing that he has not even listened to the budget himself… Perhaps he can give something that is unscripted to the people watching?
That enabled Starmer to retort:
If she’s going to complain about scripted answers, it’s probably best not to read that from a script
The two party double act
Now, Starmer is one of the biggest liars in politics.
He broke every single pledge he made to become Labour leader, trampling on the foundations of democracy. He is ushering in the end of humanity itself through failing to fund a Green New Deal. Instead, he’s propping up the fossil fuel industry with a £22bn bung on vanity carbon capture projects that don’t work.
And at last week’s PMQs, he denied that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide, despite the International Court of Justice ruling that it is a ‘plausible genocide’.
Then there’s Badenoch.
Still, she is arguably worse on these issues. She regularly lies and continued to do so at PMQs. She has described herself as a “net zero sceptic”, fanning the flames of climate denialism. And the Tory leader rushes to bootlick for Israel at every opportunity.
Featured image via Guardian News – YouTube
