The sun is shining, the trees are in full blossom, spring has sprung and summer is just around the corner. So perhaps today wasn’t really the day for Kemi Badenoch to make winter fuel payments her sole line of attack at Prime Minister’s Questions. Especially as the ranks of His Majesty’s Press had thoughtfully provided her with a veritable PMQ’s Howitzer this morning with no less that four national titles splashing on Two-Tier Keir’s newest Two-Tier wheeze, to wit, paying foreign workers more than Brits.
In case you missed it Keir struck a trade deal with India last night, and it’s worth about £5bn, which is not to be sniffed at… though before we fall over ourselves with excitement it must be pointed out that is only 0.1% of GDP. Still, every little helps. Trouble is as part of the deal Keir conceded to Indian demands to axe National Insurance for Indian workers – meaning they will either earn more take home pay than their Brit counterparts or employers can pay them less than Brits, making them more attractive to employ, depending how it shakes down.
Either way it’s yet another Two-Tier slap in the face for British “working people” Starmer tries to convince us he’s helping every single week at PMQ’s.
Yet when Kemi got to her feet at the despatch box this lunchtime… not a word. Utterly bizarre. She had a massive open goal to shoot at – one that even used the phrase “Two-Tier” – a phrase which you can see obviously irks Starmer so much.
It’s extra bizarre because when the story broke last night Kemi’s official quote was this: “This is two-tier taxes from two-tier Keir. I refused to sign this deal because: Tax refunds for Indians not available to us. Visa requests too high. Ceramics and aluminium industries would be screwed… When Labour negotiates Britain loses.”
Which is spot on. Inch-perfect… hard and low into the corner of the net. But at PMQ’s barely a murmur.
Starmer even gave the Leader of the Opposition a feed line – he actually said: “This is the biggest trade deal the UK has delivered since we left the EU.”
And Kemi knew this because, and here’s where it gets even more weird, SHE negotiated most of it! But ultimately she wouldn’t sign it precisely because she felt the suspension of NI for Indians was selling Brit workers down the river.
In the event today she answered the PM’s trade deal boast – which she could have demolished on the spot – with the non-sequitur: “Does the Prime Minister now admit that he was wrong to remove the winter fuel payments?”
And he was of course. And his own Party is now near to full rebellion over the issue. But today was not the day for winter fuel – today was Indian mutiny day.
And those Prime Ministerial balls she so shockingly brought up in last week’s PMQs, they should have been being spit-roasted as she put Starmer to the flames with a grilling over his Two-Tier India plan. But she didn’t.
So the PM got away with it again. Kemi is a smart cookie and even Keir accepted today “she has a reputation for tough talking.” But she is being let down week after week by those around her.
Back in 1991 Mrs Thatcher found herself advised by people who wanted to see the back of her. Disinformation and deliberate bad judgements were dressed up as helpful advice.
And after she had been effectively holed below the waterline by these two-faced people a leadership challenge ensued and her reign as PM was over. Surely history can’t be repeating itself?