It’s not just Labour MPs challenging Kemi Badenoch this week – now she’s taking fire from her own side.
Tory MP Mark Pritchard publicly slammed the Conservative leader in the Commons for using national security to score political points, following her dig at Keir Starmer’s absence during PMQs.
🧳 Starmer was at NATO, not skiving
Keir Starmer missed the last two Prime Minister’s Questions due to attending high-level summits with the G7 in Canada and NATO in the Netherlands.
ADVERTISEMENT
But Badenoch wasn’t having it. She accused him of “evading” his duties by missing PMQs – even after he returned to make a full statement in the Commons.
“He has evaded Prime Minister’s Questions for two weeks, only to come here to tell us what we already heard on the news,” Badenoch said. “This is a weak statement from a weak Prime Minister.”
She then claimed Britain had gone “from strategic player to the sidelines.”
Starmer didn’t hold back in his response either, calling the comments “unserious” and slamming Badenoch’s attempt to downplay the importance of global diplomacy.
“To suggest the Prime Minister attending a G7 summit and NATO summit is avoiding PMQs is unserious,” he said.
He added that Britain had played a vital role in shaping NATO’s unified stance and that the summit was “historic.”
“The world emerged safer as a result. For the Leader of the Opposition to belittle it just shows how irrelevant she and the party opposite have become.”
