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Badenoch blunders in Commons bear pit
Kemi Badenoch, November 2, 2024

NEW Tory leader Kemi Badenoch made a blundering Commons debut yesterday, twice tripping herself up at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Confronting Sir Keir Starmer, she claimed that last week’s Budget had failed to mention defence spending, when in fact it did — repeatedly.

Ms  Badenoch also criticised the Prime Minister for his “scripted answers” when she was herself clearly reading out her questions from a prepared text, a matter of public indifference but fatal in the Commons bear pit.

Labour backbench MPs, primed by their whips, used the occasion to highlight unwise remarks made during her shoot-from-the-lip leadership campaign.

The new Tory leader had her statements on maternity pay, autism, the minimum wage and playing down former PM Boris Johnson’s “partygate” scandals flung back at her in a baying Commons chamber.

According to reports, some Tory MPs are privately fearful that their new leader will prove a liability.  

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