Kemi Badenoch humiliates ‘caretaker’ Keir Starmer with one killer fact | Politics | News
Kemi Badenoch mocked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as he demanded action to cut the aid bill. Speaking in Parliament, he focused his criticism on Labour’s failure to cut the UK’s ballooning welfare bill after it emerged that Senior Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden was privately despairing over Labor MPs who only wanted to raise taxes.
While harshly criticizing the government’s record, he emphasized that unemployment has increased every month since Labor came to power in July 2024. Ms Badenoch said: “The reality is that, despite his huge majority, the Prime Minister does not have the votes to reform welfare.” Mocking Sir Keir, he said: “Everyone in this house knows he’s just the Lord Mayor of Manchester’s keeper.
“I’m happy to see the Prime Minister still has a sense of humour, because we all know he’s going to lose his job soon. He has no authority and we know why. MPs won’t let him do anything.”
Ms Badenoch noted comments from Mr McFadden, the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and current Minister for Work and Pensions. In a text message exchange with Lord Mandelson, Mr McFadden said of Labor MPs: “Every meeting I have is about ‘who can we tax to benefit others’. They are asking the wrong questions.”
The Conservative leader said: “The welfare minister has said things in private that they wouldn’t dare say in public.”
But Sir Keir said Mr McFadden wanted to help people get into work rather than benefit them, and the Prime Minister said his colleague was “right about that”.
The Prime Minister added: “All the measures we have taken for welfare reform, all the measures we have taken to get young people into jobs, are measures to reduce the cost and the number of unemployed people.”
“They brought in the broken system, we are reforming.
“Did they vote to reform with us? No, they voted to preserve the broken system.”
Ms Badenoch asked: “Benefits alone have increased by £20bn since he took office. The Prime Minister has promised welfare reforms, we’ve heard him say that now. So can he tell the House why there is no welfare reform bill in the King’s Speech?”
Sir Keir replied: “Welfare reform stabilizes universal credit so it no longer takes people away from work. That’s what we’re doing, they voted against it.”
“Welfare reform brings the right to encourage people to take up opportunities, which we do, they voted against it. Welfare reform provides record funding for apprenticeships, which is what we do. Apprenticeship starts have fallen by 40% on their watch.
“He’s talking about the welfare bill, on their watch the bill rose to £88 billion. Nearly three million people were written off, face-to-face assessment collapsed because of the contracts they agreed and the person who signed those contracts was the Shadow Chancellor.”
