Punchy remarks from Badenoch and Davey, with Starmer displaying some rare finger-jabbing angerpublished at 13:01 GMT
13:01 GMT
Chris Mason
Political editor
The main exchanges were quite something today, with Starmer, Badenoch and Davey all punchy in their own way.
This was a sticky wicket for a prime minister in a week where his leadership was imperilled.
He was self deprecating about that from the very start – and enjoyed teasing the Conservatives about shrivelling the Tory parliamentary party at the general election and how it has shrivelled further given the defections to Reform UK.
Both Badenoch and Davey sought to home in on the prime minister’s judgement over the appointment of his former director of communications Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords.
Doyle has had the Labour whip removed and apologised for campaigning for a friend who had been charged over child sexual abuse images. The Labour peer said he believed the man’s insistence on his innocence at the time.
The question – again – is what questions were asked by No 10 before making the appointment.
What stood out today was Davey managing to get under the prime minister’s skin on this.
Starmer’s flash of finger-jabbing anger about what he called “austerity” during the years of the coalition government, in which Davey was a cabinet minister was quite something – I’ve never seen Starmer react so angrily to the Lib Dem leader.