[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.

[Bones McCoy]

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

Back in my day they took their Ritalin or got a yardstick across the knuckles.

Funny how these traditionalists never apply these "tough but fair" standards to themselves.

[Bones McCoy]

I'll abbreviate the Guardian's boring piece.

Starmer has three advantages.
* Last Word - Because he's the one answering the questions.
* Exeutive advantage - Because he runs the executive.
* Badenoch is shit at PMQs. Possibly shittest LOTO ever; at PMQs.

[davidjay]

* Badenoch is shit at PMQs. Possibly shittest LOTO ever; at PMQs.

And there's been some competition since 2015.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She seems to have moved from “Starmer interfered” to “weak Starmer didn’t interfere”.

[mattomac]

I'd release that Russian report for a laugh right now.

[Oboogie]

I'd release that Russian report for a laugh right now.

I have wondered why Labour haven't done that...could it be because Labour MPs are also implicated?

[kreuzberger]

That is certainly a possibility. Being timed around the budget might also be politically prudent, as Farage Taxes are being levied.

[The Weeping Angel]

[Bones McCoy]

One third of Tommeh's Bentley's glove box.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She's also attacked Chris Giles of the FT, who wrote an article with a title she didn't like about social security by a letter that the FT have printed. Apparently it's not very good.

[Bones McCoy]

Kemi claims to have enjoyed a successful commercial career in IT and Finance before entering politics.

I wonder how much of this is IDS Waltery, and how much is true.
Could somebody so inept at their brief excel in these other sectors?

From experience there are a couple of handfuls of "too big to fail" companies in either sector.
These are typically pretty cutthroat about "removing dead wood" form their frontline teams.

On the other hand, there's a rich seam of title inflation and promotion to be mined on the "admin" side of the business.
You certainly need some extremely talented people there to handle strategy and direction.
(Though those functions have largely been usurped by the (septic jargon warning) C-suite).

On the other, there's a type of functionary whose job (real, or self appointed) is to "win at meetings".
Often achieved by "being "last one talking" when the scheduled stop time is long gone and the competent staff have to get back to some "real work" (tm).

[Andy McDandy]

The Rebekah Brooks path to business success: treat underlings like shit, suck up to those above, and whatever it is you want, you know that you want it now and it's not this shit you've just stuck in front of me, now where's my fucking coffee if you haven't fucked that up as well?

I've had managers like that. Funnily enough they were all right wingers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't get why she did a law degree, that's a lot of work if you're working full time too, and she had at least a foot in the door in finance. It seems to be more than ambition, it all seems restless. She'd have had a (by modern standards) a nice subsidy towards those degrees from the taxpayer. She can't help when she did her studies, but for someone so keen to steam into students doing pointless degrees, it's a bit odd.

[Youngian]

Well good luck with that one