Kemi Badenoch discovered that backing wars and opposing petrol prices is harder than it looks
Poor old Kemi Badenoch. How could the Tory leader possibly have foreseen that one of Donald Trump’s plans might not have been completely thought through? Were there any clues to his character in his recent behaviour? Apparently not. And how can we blame her for believing in Pete Hegseth, a war-fighting Secretary of War who wars so hard at his wars that he doesn’t even have time to buy a suit that fits? If ever two men radiated “not total loons” it was this pair.
And yet, somehow, utterly unpredictably, a US-led war in the Middle East has turned into a bit of a disaster. So by Wednesday, after more than a week of berating the prime minister for not getting Britain stuck in, Badenoch and Nigel Farage were both to be found explaining that they’d never wanted a war. Not a war. We’d misheard. They wanted to help the poor. By opening the door. So Britain’s ambitions could soar.
At prime minister’s questions, the Tory leader tried to style it out. “Why does the prime minister think now is the right time to increase the cost of petrol?” she began. As an approach, this line of questioning had the distinct advantage that Keir Starmer couldn’t work out what on earth she was talking about. Was it possible that Badenoch simply didn’t understand why you suddenly need a mortgage to fill your Mondeo?
Fortunately for the prime minister, his answers to the Tory leader are always at best tangentially related to anything that she asks. This week, his team had prepared him with an all-purpose attack on her Iran contortions that he would still have deployed if she’d used all six questions to ask about the final season of Stranger Things.
Starmer set out how Badenoch’s position had evolved over the previous seven days, up to her marvellous claim on Tuesday that she’d never called for Britain to join the war with Iran. “That is the mother of all U-turns,” he finished, “on the single most important decision that a prime minister ever has to take.”
Maybe it looked better on the page. There is a peevish tone to Starmer’s delivery that he can’t quite escape. We are for ever listening to a headmaster complaining that Year Four tread mud through the school after football practice. You can’t disagree with the point, but you feel no desire to cheer on the guy making it.
Though at least his words were grounded in reality. The Tory leader explained that the reason people are paying more for petrol isn’t the war she was so enthusiastically cheerleading a couple of days ago. It’s actually because Labour is committed to putting up fuel duty in six months.
“The prime minister seems to be answering last week’s questions,” Badenoch said. “This week I am asking about fuel duty.” Got that? That whole Iran thing is behind her. She’s moved on — why can’t you?
Starmer set about explaining for the third time that the Conservatives had changed their position, but even Lindsay Hoyle had had enough and interrupted him. At once Badenoch rose to reply to questions about what she would have done if she were in charge: “If I were prime minister, HMS Dragon would have left a week ago.” The Tories loved it, although it sounded less good the longer you thought about it: the only person who has been claiming that Badenoch wouldn’t have sent every available asset to attack Iran is Badenoch.
The prime minister took up the theme of the destroyer finally en route to the Mediterranean. “What has been happening is that it has carefully been loaded with the anti-strike ammunition and capability that it needs,” he said. “Carefully” loaded, eh? It was probably intended as an explanation of why it has taken the ship so long to leave port, but the implication was that under Badenoch, explosives would be thrown onto ships willy-nilly.
It had been a tetchy exchange all round, that showed neither leader at their best. But Badenoch’s decision to call for fuel tax cuts had the interesting effect of aligning her with Ed Davey of the Lib Dems, who also demanded that the government stop energy bills from rising. How ministers are supposed to achieve this isn’t clear, but if there’s one lesson of British politics over the last decade, it’s that no one thinks there are any votes in telling the public that they can’t have everything they want.
