Sketch: King of chaos

Few days in Westminster have been more surreal than watching Keir Starmer chat amicably with Kemi Badenoch while on the way to the King’s Speech, and all the while backbenchers and cabinet members are sharpening their knives behind him.

What did the pair talk about, one wonders. How best to avoid an imminent coup?

Badenoch’s tactic appears to be to convince her party that up is down. The recent elections where the Conservatives lost hundreds of seats across the country? That’s evidence of the party “coming back”, Badenoch had claimed. These were a set of “great results” and the party had “done brilliantly”.

Bizarrely, this technique has worked. There are no calls for her to go from a party which once changed its leader as often as you clear out the salad drawer in the fridge.

Sadly for Starmer, the Parliamentary Labour Party is less susceptible to hypnosis. The speech he delivered to save his premiership did not involve him swinging a pocket watch in front of cameras and telling people they were feeling very sleepy. Instead, he asked his party not to start “plunging our country into chaos”. Colleagues have long stopped listening.

And so here we are, as the two leaders make their way to the Lords to hear His Maj speak. TV cameras pick up Starmer saying that something is “as it should be” to Badenoch. The Tory leader replies that “it’s annoying it is as combative as it is”. Presumably they aren’t discussing the political machinations of the day, or the prime minister’s earlier 17-minute meeting with his wannabe successor Wes Streeting.

Later that afternoon, when the pair are back facing each other on the opposite benches, Badenoch begins her speech by acknowledging it is “taking place against the most extraordinary backdrop”.

“Everyone is trying to pretend it’s all right; it’s not all right,” she says, delighting in the fact that for once it is not her party experiencing leadership chaos.

Some of the Labour backbenchers are beginning to stir and heckle. “I know they can’t wait to get back to their plotting,” she responds. “They are so arrogant. They want to lead our country – they can’t even lead a coup.” Which is not exactly untrue.

Turning back to Starmer, she says he has shown a “total lack of judgement”. “This is a man who faced with a crisis of vision, charisma, and electoral success sent for Gordon Brown,” she taunts, apparently forgetting her own government sent for David Cameron when things got a bit tough.

“I do feel very sorry for Labour backbenchers. I do, I do. They arrived here not that long ago with such high hopes”, Badenoch continues. But this quickly turned to a “growing horror” as everything “descended into total chaos”.

No one has warned her about stones and glasshouses, it seems. She then goes on a weird tangent to attack women on the Labour frontbench for… having the same hairstyle.

She warns a Labour leadership race will result in “months of peacocking… while the country is not being governed”. And so, she offers some advice. “Getting to Number 10 is not an award for being in a gameshow. This is not Strictly Come Dancing – and despite appearances it’s not Traitors either.” I mean, that’s not a bad suggestion for how to run a leadership contest. Forget a battle of ideas, how about a dance off? Whoever can throw the best shapes wins the keys to Number 10. It couldn’t end worse than the current mess.

But Badenoch says it is “time to get serious” which probably rules out seeing a Streeting Stomp, a Rayner Rumba or a Burnham Bop. The electorate, she says, is too angry with the political class, “all of us”.

Emily Thornberry has had enough and stands to accuse Badenoch of using this time to insult her pals and colleagues instead of setting out the Tory alternative.

“Oh, I’m not done yet. There is plenty more coming,” she hits back. More insults or more ideas? It is unclear.

She does have one big idea though, and it’s a good one. She says Nigel Farage is not the “cause of Britain’s problems” but a “symptom”. If the government simply fixes the problems plaguing the country, “he goes away”. So, there we have it. That’s all Starmer or whoever his successor is needs to do: fix problems. Truly groundbreaking.

When it’s Starmer’s turn to respond, he welcomes Badenoch’s “warm and generous” contribution and thanks her for the advice on “how to win friends”. A dangerous jibe when almost a hundred colleagues are calling for you to quit. 

The prime minister says the King’s Speech will “tear down the status quo”. Something his backbenchers, and indeed some of his frontbenchers, will be pleased to hear. They’ve had enough of Starmer’s status quo.

“This King’s Speech gives us the strength we need,” he insists. Less than 24 hours later, the man who wants his job resigns as health secretary and urges him to call a leadership race. Is that strength, or strong-arming?