Kemi Badenoch had been rehearsing this version of prime minister’s questions for days. Ever since the Supreme Court gender ruling last week, she has been on a victory lap, and the final part of it was going to be the humiliation of Keir Starmer, a man whose views on this issue have, well, transitioned.
An uncharitable interpretation would be that the prime minister swings with the wind. But let’s be generous: he has always, completely consistently, wanted the matter to go away. When that meant simply keeping his party happy, he said one thing. Now he says something else. The important thing is that as of 2025 he identifies as someone who has always been gender critical, and he wants us to respect that.
Badenoch meanwhile is in the unusual position, for a Tory leader, of agreeing with judges. On the other hand a lot of people who as recently as 2019 argued that only Nazis questioned courts have now developed more sophisticated positions.
Her opening question was simple: did he accept he’d got it wrong? As if. Starmer had a long reply ready. “I welcome the Supreme Court ruling on this issue,” he began. “It brings clarity.”Does it? Most of the people who feel most strongly on this issue were pretty clear about the situation already, and none of them seem to have changed their minds in the last week. Perhaps he meant legal clarity, but it has always been an option for a government to legislate to deliver that themselves.
Had the ruling gone the other way, would the prime minister also have welcomed it? Quite possibly. Most of all he is a passionate champion of those who never want to have to talk about this again: “I do think this is the time now to lower the temperature, to move forward and to conduct this debate with the care and compassion that it deserves.”
Fat chance. The Tory leader regards this subject as her own personal origin story: the issue about which she was right when others were wrong. She went in again: was the prime minister going to apologise to the “very brave” Rosie Duffield, who left Labour over it? Our eyes shifted to the far back opposition bench, where Duffield now sits. As Starmer swerved the question, she shook her head and smiled somewhat caustically. She was trying to get a question in herself, bobbing up and down in the hope that Speaker Lindsay Hoyle would call her.
Starmer stuck to the Labour line, which is that the party has always thought exactly what the Supreme Court ruled. Bridget Phillipson, the minister responsible, made a heroic stand on this hill on Tuesday, in the face of reminders from Tories about what Labour had said on previous occasions, and reminders from Labour MPs that many of them very much do not think this even now.
Now the prime minister went on the attack. What, he asked, had Badenoch actually done about this issue when she was in government? “Precisely nothing!” He went on: “She’s the women and equalities minister failed to do anything for women. The trade minister who failed to get a trade deal with the US, the business minister who failed to get a deal with British Steel. She’s a spectator, not a leader.”
Badenoch wasn’t having that. “I helped commission the Cass Review!” she cried. She had been in the room, or at least just outside it, for many of the key decisions! Although, confusingly, she presumably also feels that the last government failed on the issue.
On Starmer dodged. When Badenoch asked about the Labour ministers apparently plotting to overturn the ruling, he replied with jokes about Robert Jenrick’s increasingly transparent plotting.
“He’s got no answers!” Badenoch cried, quite accurately. “He should be more worried about his backbenches than my frontbenches,” she added, which was also entirely accurate, though probably not in the way she intended. “You don’t need to worry about the Tory frontbench” is the attitude taken by many of us who work in Parliament, especially when it comes to onerous tasks like learning people’s names.
“This is a question about moral courage,” Badenoch went on, “about doing the right thing, even when it is difficult.” The invitation for comparison was clear: Cowardly Keir, scared to tell his party it was wrong, versus Courageous Kemi, brave enough to tell her party it was right.
Badenoch had some decent lines, but failed to fully demonstrate what a weasel Starmer has been on this issue
She had more: “The truth is, he doesn’t have the balls.” At this a clerk turned anxiously to Hoyle, concerned about the language. The Speaker bobbed his head from side to side, indicating he would allow it. Badenoch finished: “The prime minister only tells people what they want to hear.” She should try that theory out on Labour MPs. They would quickly disabuse her.
In the end, it was a score draw. Badenoch had some decent lines, but failed to fully demonstrate what a weasel Starmer has been on this issue. Duffield might have done a better job, but Hoyle didn’t call her to ask a question. He is at heart a Labour man, even if he identifies as neutral.
