Kemi Badenoch had plenty to work with at Prime Minister’s Questions today. She opened with the departure of the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, as it allowed her to suggest that Starmer was dodging taking responsibility himself. She asked: ‘Does the prime minister believe that when an organisation descends into total shambles, the person at the top should resign?’

Starmer replied that he was ‘very proud to lead this party at the budget last week’, listing the positive announcements on the NHS, energy bills and so on, before adding: ‘We’re fixing the mess that they left, and I’m very proud to be doing so’. 

Badenoch then made her regular accusation that Starmer didn’t want to answer her question, something she presumably copied from the Prime Minister’s stint as leader of the opposition when he accused her predecessors of dodging questions too. She claimed that Starmer ‘doesn’t want to answer a question about taking responsibility because he likes to blame everyone else except himself and so does the Chancellor’. Badenoch added that the truth was that Richard Hughes had been ‘forced out’ as the head of the OBR for telling the ‘truth’ that Reeves didn’t need to raise taxes. If Reeves had been a CEO, ‘she would have been fired, and she might even have been prosecuted for market abuse’. Reeves pulled a face of ridiculous exasperation at this point, while Badenoch demanded that the Chancellor fully co-operate with any investigation into what happened.

Like Reeves, Starmer chose to ridicule Badenoch rather than engage with her very bold claim about market abuse.........

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