[Tubby Isaacs]

Apparently she's still convinced she's found the new Watergate. Or perhaps she isn't, and just wants to get "Starmer China" in a few headlines.

[Oboogie]

Against stiff competition, this may have been Badenoch's worst PMQ performance.

[Boiler]

Who was the person that Hoyle snarled out?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Graham Stuart, I think. He used to be sane when he chaired the Education Select Committee.

[The Weeping Angel]

Apparently she's still convinced she's found the new Watergate. Or perhaps she isn't, and just wants to get "Starmer China" in a few headlines.

Guardian has a write up of PMQs here.

PMQs is not an equal contest. The prime minister gets the last word, which helps, but far more significantly he has executive advantage – information and power – not available to the leader of the opposition. Today Keir Starmer took full advantage of that, surprising MPs with a lengthy opening statement at the start of PMQs. (See 1.21pm.) He was in command right from the start and Kemi Badenoch never seriously challenged him.

Much of what Starmer said was not new. The government has been blaming the Tories for the collapse of the prosecution for days, saying if the Official Secrets Act had been updated earlier, a successful prosecution might be able to go ahead. But what was most striking about Starmer’s performance was the confidence he displayed in rebutting charges of interference, or a cover-up. The fact that he is promising to publish the three witness statements in full shows that he is fairly certain they won’t be incriminating. His assertion that the “substantive” witness statement was the one written when the Tories were in office was significant. His declaration that the final one came before the September meeting attended by Jonathan Powell undermines claims that Powell made an improper intervention. Ministers with something to hide resort to evasion; but Starmer was unambiguous in dismissing the Tory claims as “baseless”. And he was perhaps most impressive right at the end, when he spoke about avoiding political interference in prosecutions being an article of faith for him. (See 12.54pm.)

He was 90% convincing. But Starmer did not explain why, if the evidence was sufficient to justify charging the alleged spies under the Official Secrets Act in 2023, a decision was taken two years later to drop the case. The CPS has explained that on the grounds that the case law changed as a result of a ruling in a separate spy case in the spring, raising the threshold needed for a conviction. Legal experts say the court of appeal ruling in Ivanova and Rossev in fact did the opposite, lowering the threshold and making prosecution easier. If the CPS is right, it needs to explain its case more convincingly.

Badenoch gave no ground and ploughed on regardless. A reasonable person would have listened to Starmer’s case, and decided it might be best waiting until the witness statements are out before performing a judgment. But PMQs does not really allow for that sort of approach, and it is not Badenoch’s style anyway, and she just kept bashing away. Given the paucity of the evidence at her disposal, it was quite an impressive example of resilience, and Tory MPs may have liked it. But she wasn’t winning the argument.