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They roared, they wept, they cheered. The audience gasped and the markets plunged. The critics loved it. Foreigners are famously envious of British politics played as fun.
I always thought it cruel to attack a person in tears. Tell that to the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. Her savaging of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, at prime minister’s questions (PMQs) on Wednesday might have been a scene from Les Misérables. It was great theatre, but what had it to do with governing the country?
The issue at stake, the runaway cost of sickness and disability benefits, was always clear. The number of new disability benefit claimants between July 2021 and July 2022 doubled. A welfare reform bill, introduced by the new Labour government, was an emergency stopgap, curbing some payments and saving about £5bn a year.
Badenoch declared that the bill did not go far enough and should have been more radical. To the casual observer this bordered on hypocrisy, since she had sat in the cabinet that ran this system. At the very least, she could have accepted the bill as a move in the right direction and voted in its favour. The bill was a curb on public spending, which Badenoch supported in principle, and an attempt to avoid raising taxes, which she also supported. It might even go some way to meeting the £7bn a year for the HS2 project, which Reeves still lacks the guts to cancel.
Most of Europe’s democratic assemblies, such as Germany’s Bundestag or France’s National Assembly, see legislative compromise as the outcome of shifting coalitions. Britain is hopeless at forming such coalitions. They go against the grain of the petty bickering and staged insults with which the House of Commons whiles away its time.
The greatest tragedy in recent British politics was the failure of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour MPs to forge an alliance with Theresa May’s anti-Brexit Tories to back her soft Brexit bill in 2019. She lost and eventually fell. Corbyn’s MPs preferred to see her squirm at the dispatch box rather than do the right thing for the country. Labour could have averted much of the Brexit disaster, but crucifying May was more fun.
There was initially some talk of the Tories supporting Starmer’s original bill and voting it through against the rebel Labour backbenchers. It was better than no bill, and Badenoch could have revelled in Starmer having to rely on her. Any time you need help running the country, she could have said, just knock on my door. Always happy to oblige. Tony Blair borrowed half his policies from the Thatcher/Major era. Join the club, Starmer.
Reports indicate that the shadow cabinet did indeed discuss this possibility. Some members were prepared to show themselves ready to act in the national interest as a responsible governing party. Others were more downmarket. For them, being in opposition meant a good scrap and Starmer writhing in pain. Badenoch decided to go with the latter view.
In the event, Starmer won a stripped-down bill and was indeed humiliated, but by his own side. It is thanks to the Tories that welfare reform will now only save £2bn rather than £5bn a year of taxpayers’ money, and taxes may rise as a result. All the Tory leader had in return was a few seconds on television being brutal to Reeves. The tactics adopted by her parliamentary party bordered on the childish.
There is no doubt that Badenoch has brought an aggressive voice to the theatre of British politics. Nowadays, virtually the only time MPs crowd the chamber or appear on television is for PMQs. The undergraduate badinage suits the 24/7 style of news and the increasingly short-term nature of policymaking. It suits Badenoch’s fondness for going on the attack.
She is less good at defence. She has refrained from making policy declarations or stating any ideological beliefs, protesting that she is too far from an election to take such risks. This is understandable, but it leaves her exposed as little more than a partisan figure. She may try to upstage Reform UK’s Nigel Farage at every turn, but she makes him seem almost emollient and broad-minded amid her unreasonable barrages.
Badenoch seems to crave enemies rather than friends. She is under persistent pressure to come out fighting. But leaders who become prisoners of their court circle tend to come to grief. Just now there are plenty of knives sticking into Starmer. The Tory leader need not add to their number. She should rather develop a character of her own above the fray.
That is why Badenoch should have voted for Starmer’s bill. She should have taken on the role of a responsible leader ready to assist in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. Instead she chose merely to assail a weeping chancellor in distress.
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Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
