A Tory MP has torn into his leader Kemi Badenoch for playing party politics over issues of national security.
This week, Keir Starmer has been attending the G7 and NATO summits in Canada and the Netherlands respectively, meaning that he has missed the last two editions of Prime Minister’s Questions.
Despite what many would deem to be a pretty valid excuse, Badenoch decided this was an opportunity to criticise the PM, accusing him of “evading” PMQs.
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After Starmer returned to the Commons to give statement on the international summits, Badenoch said: “He has evaded Prime Minister’s Questions for two weeks, only to come here to tell us what we already heard on the news. This is a weak statement from a weak Prime Minister which can be characterised in two words; ‘noises off’.”
She added: “We used to be a strategic player on the global stage, advancing Britain’s interests with confidence, and now we are on the sidelines.”
The comments were dismissed by Starmer, who described the Tory leader as “unserious”, but have now also been slammed by Tory MP Mark Pritchard.
Addressing the prime minister in the house on Thursday, Pritchard said he agreed with Starmer that “as possible, in this place, it would be “better to keep partisan politics out of national security issues.”
“Who knows, I may get the whip withdrawn for saying that, but so be it – there are things that go beyond party politics,” the Wrekin MP added.
Responding to Badenoch’s comments, Starmer said: “There has never been a more important time to work with our allies, and to be absolutely serious in our response. That response was unserious.
“To suggest that at a time like this that the Prime Minister attending a G7 summit and the Nato summit is avoiding PMQs is unserious.
“What happened at Nato yesterday was historic. It was very important at a time like this that Nato showed unity and strength with a commitment to the future, not just to the past. That took a huge amount of work with our allies over the last few days and weeks.
“We have been centrally involved in that, crafting the final outcome, and we were recognised as having done so. I am proud that we helped put that summit into the right place, and the world emerged safer as a result.”
He added: “For the leader of the Opposition to belittle it just shows how irrelevant she and the party opposite have become. They used to be serious about these issues, they used to be capable of cross-party consensus, and all of that is slipping away.”