PMQs: Kemi Badenoch starts well against Starmer but then ruins it. The next lettuce?

The thing is, Kemi Badenoch isn’t a conventional politician. She does not take the obvious route. Boris Johnson operated on charisma and wordplay, Rishi Sunak pointed to rare successes, but Ms Badenoch instead chose fury, with an angrier approach that leads to mistakes.

She used PMQs to raise concerns about Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, which seeks to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts and “unscrupulous” fire and rehire practices. Ms Badenoch’s take was to warn it would damage business, hinder growth, and cost the public purse. It was a classic Labour Tory battle, the party of the workers vs the party of business. The problem is, she didn’t just stop there. She went on to say Sir Keir Starmer didn’t want to talk about his Employment Bill because he “doesn’t know about it”, and then accused him of misleading the House. Hey now! You can call something rubbish in the Commons, but you can’t accuse someone of lying or being misleading. Her comments got her a telling off from the Speaker, and diffused any momentum she might have had.

She then claimed that the bill meant people could work in the morning, and take their bosses to a tribunal in the afternoon. If that sounds ridiculous, it is because it’s patently untrue. Ms Badenoch has done well on defending business, but then gone too far and said something that won’t happen.

It in turn allowed Sir Keir to say something funny, which is almost as unbelievable as some of the opposition's leaders claims. After she repeated her “lawyer not a leader dig”, Sir Keir replied: "We know she's not a lawyer. She's clearly not a leader. If she keeps up like this, she is going to be the next lettuce."

Tories are already wondering if she’ll last this parliament. Better angles of attack will be needed to do so.