Order. Order. I say to the honorable gentle commission, I will not tolerate such behavior. If you want to go out, go out now. But if you stand again, I’ll lure you out. Make your mind up and then shut up and get out. Gather around because what you’re about to witness is Kia Starmer standing at the dispatch box of the British Parliament dodging questions like his life depends on it.
While Kemmy Bnock lines them up one by one, cool as you like, and says, “Right then, let’s try this again. I’m Oliver Grant. March 25th, 2026. Last week, Star’s own ambassador to Washington was at the center of a scandal. His chief of staff is out the door. His approval rating is sitting at minus 57. And somehow this man walks into the last PMQs before Easter recess like it’s just another Wednesday.
Drop a like and subscribe if you want more of this. Most people watching right now haven’t subscribed. All right, watch this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I asked the prime minister six questions last week and he didn’t answer a single one. He has a duty to this house, Mr. Speaker, to answer the question. Let’s see if he can do better this week.
I’ll start with a simple one. Will the prime minister approve the licenses for Rose Bank and Jack Door gas fields in the North Sea? Prime Minister, Mr. speaker the under statute uh that is a matter for the secretary of state as she knows because it’s the sec it it’s the it’s the same arrangements that were in place under the last government licenses were granted they were then struck down because of the defects in the process of the last government but Mr. Speaker, oil and gas is coming out of the North Sea 24/7.
Uh it will be part of the energy mix for many years to come. We fully support all existing oil and gas fields throughout their lifespan. And in November, we made changes to extend to allow neighboring fields to be exploited. But we need to take control of our energy prices. The only way to do that is through renewables.
the the party the party opposite used to make that argument. One of their one of their senior figures in 22 said this. It’s investment in nuclear renewables that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and keep our consumer cost down. Who was that senior figure? The leader of the opposition. agree with you, sir.
This is not the day to be thrown out with a twoe break. Coming coming, Mr. Speaker, we can have renewables and oil and gas. He said he says he says it’s a matter for the secretary of state. He says it’s a matter for the secretary secretary of state.
I thought he was the prime minister and he loves to hide behind legal process every single time. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, what a director of public what have I order Mr. Yson you don’t want to test my patience I’m sure come back Mr. Mr. Speaker, the prime minister loves to hide behind legal hide behind legal process. I wonder what a director of public prosecutions would make of the defense. Sorry, I can’t produce my WhatsApps. My phone’s been stolen.
The jacko gas field could be up and running before winter. All that gas would be used here in the UK to heat 1.6 million homes. That is enough to power Norfolk, Suffukk, and Essex. put together. So, will the prime minister approve the licenses or is the energy secretary running the government? Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, legislation has been passed. It’s absolutely clear that the quasi judicial duty under legislation rests with the secretary of state.
I really think if she’s going to put this challenge to me, she needs to read the legislation. That is the legislation that they applied for 14 years. It’s exactly the legislation that they used to put the licenses in place which were then struck down because the process was defective. But Mr. Speaker, let’s be clear. When Russia invaded Ukraine, energy prices doubled.
The 12-day war, oil prices hit 100 pounds a barrel. In the last four weeks, because we’re on the fossil fuel roller coaster, everybody has been held to ransom. The only way forward is to go further and faster on renewables. And the leader we, Mr.
Speaker, the leader of the opposition’s approach is to outsource our foreign policy and let the US decide whether we go to war, to outsource our energy policy to Russia and Iran and let them set the price of energy. I will never do that because it’s not in the British national interest. Not, Mr. Speaker. He is hiding behind so many people. He is the prime minister. He can make this decision today. He can. He can. He is so weak. He’s the first person to be pushed around by the energy secretary. Let me remind him, Mr.
Speaker, let me remind him who is on my side. The unions. Yes, GMBB. They’re on my side. Tony Blair, Mr. Speaker, Renewable UK, the very people that he’s talking about, they are saying drill in the North Sea, Centrica, Octopus Energy, even Labor MPs.
Let me quote the Labour member for Pemrchshire who says offshoring our carbon emissions might give a sense of moral superiority, but it is simply impoverishing our communities. We We agree. So why does the Prime Minister think he knows better than everyone else? Minister, I’m going to have one more go. The legislation, the statute, the law prescribes the decision maker. They know that. They should be embarrassed that she doesn’t even She’s attacking me without having read the legislation.
The legislation sets out who the decision maker is. It’s the Secretary of State. It is not the Prime Minister. It has to be the Secretary of State. And it’s a quality judicial process. Exactly. the process that they ran for many years. And Mr. Speaker, oil and gas is part of the mix for many years to come. But we do need to get on to renewables. But, Mr. Speaker, we’re we’re discussing this because of the war. We need to deescalate.
And that is Yes, we are. That is why I stuck to my principles not to join the war and to act in collective self-defense. I appreciate the leader of the opposition doesn’t get that. She wanted to jump into the war without regard to the consequences and then do a mother of all U-turns and now she’s stranded without a thought through position. And Mr.
Speaker, when she was asked at the weekend whether she approved of the war, she said, “Oh, uh, that’s a difficult one. It certainly is if you’ve got absolutely no judgment.” Mr. Speaker, I’m going to let the prime minister in on a secret. He’s the prime minister. He can change the legislation. Hiding behind the energy sector is pathetic. Mr.
Speaker, under his Labor government, under his Labor government, we buy half the gas we use from Norway. Last year, Labour’s uh Norway’s Labor government drilled 49 wells in the North Sea. That’s what Norway’s Labor government did. How many did Britain drill? Zero. For the first time since 1964, under his government, Britain drilled no wells. Why is energy security the right policy for labor in Norway, but the wrong policy for labor in Britain? Mr. Speaker, so now our attack is if you change to pass some different law, you could take the decision which she’s challenged me today for not taking. It’s
absolutely ridiculous. All that would do is to slow the process down. Oil and gas is coming out every day. There’s a mix of that and renewables. But it’s really important, Mr. Speaker. The most important thing to get energy security is to ensure we deescalate this war. I know where I stand on this. We are not joining the war.
She wanted to join the war. She didn’t think through the consequences and now she doesn’t know where she stands on the most important issue facing this country at this time. Mr. Speaker, the Norwegian prime minister is doing what is right for his country. If only our prime minister would do the same. Stopping stopping all new drilling in the North Sea was a reckless promise when he made it before the election. In the middle of a global energy crisis, it is catastrophic.
Experts are predicting a £300 rise in bills in July. Approving new licenses would show he was serious about cutting bills. Why won’t he do it? Mr. Speaker, because of the action that we’ve taken, bills are coming down by up to £100 household bills next month. Then they will be capped for three months.
That’s what we’re doing to protect households across the country. And who voted against it? the tourists and reform because they just don’t get the impact on working people that we will protect. Mr. Speaker, he says bills are coming down. They are higher than they were when he came into office.
And he’s talking about uh you know, he’s talking about what they’re doing to help with energy bills. Families and businesses will suffer from the spike in energy costs because of his decisions. He could abolish the green taxes on their bills. He could stop the fuel duty rise. We could drill our own gas in the North Sea. What’s he doing? He is planning another giveaway to people on welfare.
Yet again, he’s taking money from those who do work to give to those who don’t. First, we had the budget for benefit street. Now, it’s the bailout for benefit street. Doesn’t this just prove that they’ve given up being the Labor Party and they’re now just the welfare party? Right. Let’s go through what just happened because there is a lot to unpack and every single moment in that exchange was deliberate.
First, the opening. She comes in on energy. Not Mandlesen, not Morgan Mweeny’s missing phone, which all of Westminster has been obsessing over all week. Energy. Specifically, the government’s refusal to grant new drilling licenses for Jack Door and Rosebank. Think about that choice for a second. Every journalist in Westminster is expecting her to go straight for the scandal and she doesn’t. She opens on something that directly hits people’s pockets instead.
Why? Because if she opens on Mandlesen, he is ready. He has spent the whole morning with his advisers rehearsing those lines. His defenses are up. She refuses to fight him on ground he has prepared. That is not weakness. That is discipline. That is the sign of someone who has genuinely learned how to do this job. and watch Starmmer’s response to that first question. He immediately retreats into procedure.
It is the Secretary of State for Energy, he insists, not the Prime Minister who is legally responsible for granting drilling licenses. He explains the process. He explains the framework. He explains the law. This is Starmmer at his most loyally putting procedure over politics, placing detail over the big picture.
And it teases Badno up perfectly because she comes back with one line. He is the prime minister. That is it. Three words delivered flatly, mocking him for hiding behind procedure in front of the entire house. And she is right. And everyone watching knows she is right.
This is a man who was elected to lead the country, not to defer to his own cabinet ministers, not to hide behind legal technicalities when voters are watching their energy bills go up. Three words. And the chamber feels it immediately. And then before he has even recovered, she lands the first personal blow. Her party is under new leadership. Many Labour MPs, she says, wish theirs was too, delivered quietly, almost gently.
That is the first wound and it is a deep one because every person watching knows she is right. The conversations are already happening inside the Labour Party. The names are already being said. She doesn’t need to spell any of that out. She just needs to say that one line and let the audience fill in the rest. Now watch what happens next.
Starmmer reaches for his comfort blanket. The joke about conservative defections to reform. He has used this line for months. It gets a laugh from his own benches. It is the one weapon he reliably goes back to when he has run out of anything else to say. And you can see it coming from a mile away, which means Badnock can see it coming from a mile away. So she pivots. She hammers on Labour as the party of benefit street.
She tells Star the only reason anyone is talking about energy today is because she raised it. She tells him she wants to ditch Tory policies that didn’t work. Whereas he wants to copy them. With oil prices in the headlines and the holy rude elections looming, every word is landing somewhere it hurts.
And then Starmmer’s response for the second time in this session is to accuse her of carping from the sidelines. The same line unchanged. The same line that Theresa May used against him. The same line that Boris Johnson used against him. The same line that Rishi Sunnak used against him when he was in opposition. He is literally recycling the insults that were thrown at him by the people he replaced.
Think about what that tells you. This man who rebuilt the Labour Party from the ground up, who spent years preparing to lead this country is standing at the dispatch box and he has nothing. No new attack, no clever reframe, no answer, just a line he stole from his predecessors. Then comes the Iran moment. Sta tries to pivot. He references Badno’s now infamous flip on UK involvement.
She attacked him relentlessly for refusing to join the USIsraeli strikes and then as the war became deeply unpopular with the British public quietly tried to pretend that had never been her position. Starmmer calls it and I am paraphrasing the mother of all U-turns on the single most important question a prime minister ever faces.
It is a semidecent comeback, but Bado barely flinches. She moves straight on to the next question, hammering home the energy theme. She is not rattled. She is building a case. Then the sixth question, the final one. Watch her delivery here because this is the moment that separates a good opposition leader from a great one. She does not shout. She does not go for the dramatic finish.
She looks at him calmly and says, “His government is useless. He cannot take decisions. Six words, said flatly, like a verdict being read out. And he was photographed head in his hands in mock exasperation. That image, that will be the image of this session, plastered on every front page tomorrow morning.
A prime minister with his head in his hands. And Starmmer responds for the second time in this session with carping from the sidelines. the same line, unchanged, as if saying it again might somehow make it work this time. Now, step back and look at the two benches in that final exchange. Look at the conservative side. Those MPs are energized. They are loud.
They look for the first time in a long time like they are genuinely enjoying being in that room. And look at the Labour benches, defensive, uncomfortable. Some of them visibly not wanting to be there. These are the people who won one of the biggest electoral victories in modern British political history less than two years ago and they look like they are losing.
Because here is the truth about what Kimmy Badno has figured out that Starmmer has no answer to. Her job is not to outar argue him on policy detail. She will never beat a former director of public prosecutions on technicalities. Her job is simpler than that. Her job is to make people feel what they already know. that something has gone badly wrong. That this is not the government the country thought it was voting for.
That the man at the top does not have the authority, the energy, or the instinct to turn this around. And every week, she gets a little bit better at it. Every week, the questions get shorter and sharper. Every week, Starmer’s responses sound a little more like a man reading from a script that stopped working months ago.
The May 2026 local elections are weeks away. Reform is polling at 30% nationally. Labor and the Conservatives are tied on 18. Inside the Labour Party, the names Wes Streeting, Angela Raina, Andy Bernham are being discussed seriously. Not speculatively, seriously.
And every Wednesday at noon, Kem Badnock stands up in that chamber and gives those Labour MPs one more reason to ask themselves how much longer they can afford to wait. Kama is still prime minister today. But after watching that exchange, after watching him reach for the same recycled line twice in 12 minutes while she dismantled him question by question on an issue that every working family in Britain feels in their pocket.
The real question is not whether he is struggling. Everyone knows he is struggling. The question is whether there is anyone left inside his own party or outside it who still genuinely believes he has a way back. after March 25th, 2026. I am not sure there is. If you made it this far, you already know what to do. Like the video, subscribe, and drop in the comments what you think happens to Starmmer after the May elections. I’ll see you in the next
