Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Badenoch has the chance to be the realist who shows up the moralist

Kemi Badenoch told Sir Keir Starmer that in Liverpool and Birmingham “the rubbish is piling up so high people vote Labour and all they get is trash just like what he’s saying at the Despatch Box.”

Both sides of the House enjoyed this cheap crack. The workers and peasants sitting behind Starmer wished to show how laughable they found her attack on the Supreme Leader.

The Conservatives want Badenoch to trash Starmer’s reputation every week. This has not yet happened: he is dull, but resilient, and each week informs the House in a pious tone that whatever is wrong with the country is the fault of the Conservatives during their 14 years in government.

To this he has recently added the airs and graces of an international statesman who is working to bring peace with security to Ukraine.

Badenoch said “the Prime Minister needs to get out more”, and if only he did, he would find “his tax rises are hurting every sector of the economy”, and he is running “a high-tax, low-growth, job-killing government”.

Starmer feels safe on the moral high ground, but the trouble with that territory is that it can seem remote from everyday concerns. So too the jet-setting life of the peacemaker.

John Slinger (Lab, Rugby) offered a faintly implausible glimpse of opinion in his constituency: “With one in eight young people across the country not in education, employment or training, people in Rugby are worried about a wasted generation.”

Slinger asked the Prime Minister to “fix the broken welfare system left behind by, you guessed it, the Conservatives”.

The Prime Minister began his reply by proclaiming his moral right to deal with this problem: “I come from a family that dealt with disability through my mother and brother over many years, so I do understand the concerns that are being raised by him.”

He added that “we inherited a system which was broken, which is indefensible economically and morally, and we must and we will reform it. We will have clear principles, we will protect those who need protecting. We will also support those who can work back to work. But Labour is the party of work, we are also the party of equality and fairness.”

Starmer seeks to render the moral high ground impregnable, with the wicked Tories shut out, and access controlled by him and his closest allies.

It is understandable that the PM should wish to impose on the nation his instinctive notion of politics as a battle between good and evil, with himself as leader of the forces of good. But by laying such stress on this, he also sounds vulnerable.

He leaves Badenoch with the opportunity to report each week from the outside world that real life is more complicated, and government policy less irreproachable, than he pretends: to be the realist who shows up the moralist.