'It's not a laughable moment...' | PMQs analysed

Sasha Clarke is here. Yeah. Um. It was a bit of a matter, wasn't it? Yeah, a little bit of a hodgepodge there. I don't know what she was doing, but I rarely do. I'm always happy to give credit where credit is due. She was, for example, really lovely and brilliant at the last one with Keir Starmer. But he was a bit, almost as if he had something else on his mind, I thought. He was a little bit distracted as well this week. I did think that. I think Kemi Badenoch's aim this week Was to portray this theme of drift, a lack of a plan, uncertainty, where's Andy Burnham's government going, picking some holes in. Basically, the plans that he's laid out so far, where is the spending review going to be? Sort of kicking decisions into the long grass on defence. When is he going to properly fund that? So I think her argument today was just to sort of show that actually Andy Burnham hasn't got the answers on all these things yet. Does that feel a bit unfair for a prime minister that's potentially only been in office for a few months? And of course they had 14 years, which is the point he keeps returning. Yeah, and actually Andy Burnham then came back and said, well, I'm going to set out my 10 year plan next. And that was not confirmed before that. We did learn that today. And the, what's this, CHOP's Milburn report next week. And the Milburn report will be next week. That's quite a lot of stuff. Absolutely, a lot of stuff. That's two big things that we can look forward to from the government setting out pretty much where they think that the next sort of at least few years of Andy Burnham's government, but also could set, you know, the train for what welfare spending. Neats, jobs, young people looks like far far into the future so she might be able to accuse Andy Burnham of a sort of a lack of a plan on this now but in two or three weeks time we do expect the government to come forward with some really detailed stuff on this. I presume they all do it it's hard to hard to remember. But, you know, saying, will you tell us now, something that I know you can't tell us now. Yeah, and you're going to set out, presumably she knows that it's something that Sony is going to set out. Why don't you do it now? Why didn't you do it yesterday? Because it's that thing that's scheduled to happen a week on Thursday. Why don't you do it tomorrow? Exactly. It's just weird, isn't it? But the theme was, he's not made these big decisions. And to be fair, she did mention other decisions. Rosebank is a looming decision. Electric car targets is another decision. The defence spending plan, the spending review, these are all very big decisions that the government haven't set out. Exactly, when they're going to come out. But they never do, really, do they? They don't usually until it happens, right? So I guess she can push and she can say there are big unanswered questions. And that is her role as leader of the opposition, to be pushing on those big holes. A little bit of a moment which we both cringed at when she said, you know, Miliband should be ashamed of cosying up to Russell Brand. Felt like it probably wasn't a laughable moment for people in the Commons there. It's not really one I would make a joke about in the Commons. She obviously feels differently. I don't think it really worked there. And then obviously I had Davey talking about. about Brexit. Why should we not? Why don't we predict that? He said, you know, always is good. I think from now until the end of time, ask Andy Burnham if he'll be joining rejoining the EU. And he said no, not for now. So I misunderstood that. But I thought that was no, not for now on the census question. But I did. I did get distracted. No, he's he I think he was quite welcoming of the census question, actually, which is this bill that the Liberal Democrats have brought forward, basically saying there's not enough options in the census to be I haven't looked at the details of the bill, but I stand here thinking that I would want to support that to directly take on the poisonous politics that we've seen from some in this House who are seeking to divide us. I'm not sure exactly who he's responding to. She's the only one who said that she can't be English because she's... That's a good point. He probably is referring to that. You're probably right. Can't see who else. Yeah, that's fair. And also doing that thing that we would like to see perhaps the leader of the opposition do a bit more often, which is praise. His opposite number. They all praised each other quite a lot, actually, I thought, today. Ed Davie praising, indeed, the Conservative leader for standing up for that. And Burnham joining in and saying, I too would praise. But I don't think she praised anyone, did she? She didn't, as far as I could see. So they weren't all doing it, then. We didn't see the very top of PMQ, so I may want to say that we may have missed it. What was the bit about the Boston Consulting Group, Natasha? I do this for a living, and that had actually passed me by. Yeah, so this Boston Consultancy Group, a very niche. reference, even within Westminster, to be talking about this. It's a group that James Purnell, who works now in Number 10, now used to work with. And their group is said to be behind some of the comms, the strategy of this 10-year plan that Andy Burnham is planning to set out. So, Kemi Badenoch said at the very start, he's got so little vision that he needs the Boston Consultancy Group to write his 10-year plan for him. Again, it's a little bit of a niche joke, and it's also not something that governments, that political parties, You know, external comms agencies all the time. So it's a little bit odd. And again, I think it's a bit too niche for Westminster. And also, because I checked this, as I don't like not knowing things, when she said that one Labour MP had described it as a tragic joke, he was actually, or she, was complaining that they didn't think the 10-year plan would be radical or left-wing enough. Well, people said that about the budget as well, didn't they? Yeah, so whether or not she realised that the critic that she was citing was calling for... Much more. Much more to go even further. Yeah, she's probably arguing for the other side. But yes, I think, in fairness, yeah, that's her argument. She's saying Andy Burnham isn't being bold, visionary enough. But even when he goes there, she's just going to attack it and say this isn't the right plan anyway. So we'll see. But yes, the 10-year plan will obviously be a big moment for the government to set out what they're actually going to do and what Andy Burnham actually wants. We had one before, because I do suffer from... Deja vu. Have other governments given us a 10-year plan? Keir Starmer did, in essence, give us a version of a 10-year plan. I'm not sure he ever said that, but all politicians say that they want to serve for 10 years. They all say that they want to serve for at least two parliaments. So they have set out versions of 10-year plans before. I think Boris Johnson gave us a 10-year plan. He at least said he wanted to serve for 10 years at the very end of his premiership. You need 10 years to do social care. It's something that I am prepared to believe Boris Johnson genuinely did want to do. And then, of course, he didn't. And that would be largely down to COVID. And then, of course, the fact that he was chased out of the door of Parliament by his own MPs shortly afterwards. But you can't do social care in a single Parliament. You certainly can't do it in half a Parliament, which is what Andy Burnham has inherited. Yeah, and he's already saying... The choices that he's made around the triple lock, around the pensions decisions, which will change the pensions triple lock, they're not going to come in for another few years. And that's the start of that conversation about social care. Baroness Louise Casey, who's been out speaking to us today and others, it's going to take a long time for her to come back for her proposal. She's been trying to be told by Andy Burnham, we need to speed this up. We need to get this done now. But it's going to take ages for her to set it out. And then for the government to respond and come back. And that's exactly what we've seen with Alan Milburn. It's been already kicked back until this point. And we still don't know what the government are actually going to say about it. Although, I suppose, in her defence, that she can criticise Andy Burnham for for using outsiders to work on his speeches. Because he could do what she does and just use Twitter. I'm sure there's nobody that's ever helped her with a speech, of course.