{"id":420049,"date":"2026-02-11T14:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/420049\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:45:09","slug":"badenoch-presses-starmer-on-putting-former-aide-in-lords-after-he-campaigned-for-sex-offender-follow-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/420049\/","title":{"rendered":"Badenoch presses Starmer on putting former aide in Lords after he campaigned for sex offender – follow live"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Analysis\"Punchy remarks from Badenoch and Davey, with Starmer displaying some rare finger-jabbing angerpublished at 13:01 GMT<\/p>\n

13:01 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Chris Mason
Political editor<\/p>\n

The main exchanges were quite something today, with Starmer, Badenoch and Davey all punchy in their own way.<\/p>\n

This was a sticky wicket for a prime minister in a week where his leadership was imperilled. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Both Badenoch and Davey sought to home in on the prime minister\u2019s judgement over the appointment of his former director of communications Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s insistence on his innocence at the time.<\/p>\n

The question – again – is what questions were asked by No 10 before making the appointment.<\/p>\n

What stood out today was Davey managing to get under the prime minister\u2019s skin on this.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Punchy remarks from Badenoch and Davey, with Starmer displaying some rare finger-jabbing angerpublished at 13:01 GMT 13:01 GMT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-420049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}