{"id":494563,"date":"2026-03-25T13:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494563\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T13:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:51:09","slug":"keir-starmer-and-kemi-badenoch-clash-over-north-sea-gas-licences-and-energy-bill-support-at-prime-ministers-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494563\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch clash over North Sea gas licences and energy bill support at Prime Minister’s Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s plenty besides Iran that could come up at PMQspublished at 11:55 GMT<\/p>\n

11:55 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Brian Wheeler
Reporting from the House of Commons<\/p>\n

A looming cost of living crisis triggered by the Iran war is dominating everything at Westminster (and beyond) \u2013 but that does not mean it will necessarily dominate PMQs.<\/p>\n

Kemi Badenoch may opt to go on the attack over Chancellor Rachel Reeves\u2019s plans for targeted fuel bill help<\/a> for poorer households \u2013 and repeat her call for green levies and a planned petrol tax increase to be scrapped.<\/p>\n

But after her success last week in putting the PM on the spot over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, the Tory leader may decide to focus instead on the curious case of Morgan McSweeney\u2019s mobile phone.<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories are running wild after it was revealed that the PM\u2019s former chief of staff had his mobile phone stolen last October. <\/p>\n

McSweeney\u2019s phone is assumed to have contained messages about his role in the appointment of Mandelson that may now never see the light of day in the document dump forced on the government by MPs in a vote last month.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Police did not investigate the theft, and it\u2019s since emerged that the force recorded the wrong address for the theft.<\/p>\n

Health Secretary Wes Streeting this morning said the police had questions to answer.<\/p>\n

All of this feeds neatly into Badenoch\u2019s “broken Britain” narrative and that, combined with the ability to pile on the pressure over the Mandelson scandal, may prove hard to resist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s plenty besides Iran that could come up at PMQspublished at 11:55 GMT 11:55 GMT Brian WheelerReporting from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-494563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494563","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=494563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}