DAN HODGES: Kemi's devious plan to run rings around 'Tin Man' Starmer

Kemi Badenoch reckons she’s worked out how to beat Sir Keir Starmer. ‘The thing Kemi’s noticed is he can’t think on his feet,’ an ally of the new Tory leader told me. ‘He comes into Prime Minister’s Questions with his big briefing book and doesn’t ever get his head out of it. He’s very stilted. It’s supposed to be for guidance. But he can’t move away from his brief. And that’s where we think we can start to expose him.’

Badenoch and her team plan to exploit this perceived weakness at their weekly PMQs jousts – which began last Wednesday – in a number of ways.

First, she’s going to use them as an opportunity to contrast her relative youth and vigour with his rather staid and lawyerly Despatch Box demeanour.

‘From the moment she stood up on Wednesday, she just looked different to Starmer,’ an ally said.

‘She had the energy – and a bit of fight. He was too scripted. Yes, he came up with that line about her reading her questions. But having pre-prepared questions isn’t the same as having pre-prepared answers.’

The second thing Team Badenoch intend to do is, as they phrase it, ‘pull Starmer off his bullet points’. According to the same ally: ‘Kemi’s going to keep coming at him from different angles and throw him off balance. He won’t be able to regurgitate the line to take. That’s when he’ll start to make mistakes.’

And then she plans to start to deploy some old-style parliamentary tradecraft.

‘On Wednesday, she didn’t wind up with a big peroration,’ says a source. ‘She used it for a question. That meant Starmer couldn’t do his own big wind-up. And she’s going to do that a lot. It’ll prevent him playing up to his MPs and getting a staged ovation at the end.’

All this talk of the Prime Minister’s lead-footedness might be seen as wishful thinking from the Tories’ new leader. Except for the fact similar concerns are being voiced by Starmer’s own MPs.

‘There’s something about Keir that’s not quite right,’ one senior Labour backbencher told me. ‘He just doesn’t seem comfortable in his own skin. His public appearances are very stilted. It’s as if his heart isn’t in it. I’m not entirely sure he’s all that happy being Prime Minister.’

He certainly doesn’t seem to be relishing his new role. On Tuesday evening Starmer appeared on the House of Commons terrace to address the parliamentary press gallery. It was a robotic performance. There were a couple of forced jokes, and some cliches about the contribution of journalists to the democratic process. But it was all dialled in.

Just as it was the next day in his first clash with Badenoch. He got good support from his backbenchers, who had been well revved up by the whips. But in contrast their leader appeared very wooden.

Though ‘wooden’ may not be the right word. As Starmer showed during the summer’s anti-immigration rioting, he isn’t brittle and possesses an inner strength. A better comparison is the Tin Man from The Wizard Of Oz. Robust, but unflexible and passionless. Seemingly lacking heart.

And again, it’s a perception that is starting to seep into his own Cabinet. One Minister has been telling colleagues they find Starmer strangely detached. ‘Whenever they try to engage with the PM, he doesn’t seem properly present,’ a source told me. ‘He tells them to take up the issue with one of the advisers.’

Another Minister revealed a growing concern over the amount of time Starmer is spending abroad. ‘It’s as if he can’t wait to get out of Westminster,’ they observed. ‘It’s always said that prime ministers eventually lose themselves in diplomacy because it gives a break from the problems at home. Starmer’s been throwing himself into foreign trips from day one.’

An assessment supported by the fact that since becoming PM in July, Starmer has made 13 overseas trips to nine countries.

Some colleagues are also becoming worried he is failing to take sufficient ‘ownership’ of his own government, and that the real drive within Starmer’s administration is coming from outside of No 10. There’s a general sense among Labour MPs that the Budget landed relatively well. And they believe the Tory response to it is creating some clear blue water between the two parties. One Labour MP told me: ‘It’s giving us the definition we’ve been struggling for. Every time that voters see a Tory banging on about how terrible we’re being on farmers, or private schools or inheritance tax, we’re winning.’

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But the Budget was the handiwork of Rachel Reeves, and her steely control of the economic agenda. It’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper who’s leading the charge against the people-smuggling gangs. And Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been handed responsibility for driving through NHS reform.

‘Keir hasn’t really taken charge of anything,’ one Minister told me. ‘The line from Downing Street is that he trusts his team and likes to delegate. Well, that’s fine. But Thatcherism and Blairism were coined for a reason. It wasn’t Teamism.’

So far, Starmer’s failure to stamp his identity on his premiership has not created political problems.

The Tories were shell-shocked after their election massacre. Rishi Sunak was little more than a dignified Caretaker of the Opposition. And Labour MPs have just been happy to be back in government, rather than tramping the wastelands of opposition.

But now the post-election phoney war is over. In Kemi Badenoch, Starmer faces a volatile, but tenacious, adversary.

The tax assault on farms, small businesses and inherited wealth has raised the Tory Party from its stupor. And Labour is coming to realise that without a Conservative government to kick around, politics has suddenly become a whole lot harder.

So now they are looking for some leadership. And struggling to find it.

In the build-up to the General Election, Sir Keir Starmer’s inability to craft a clear identity for himself was viewed through the prism of tactical expediency. It made him difficult to pin down, and target. But in power, his instinctive caution is starting to work against him.

Last week, I bumped into a senior former adviser from the Blair/Brown years. He was bemused by the lack of dynamism from Starmer and his Government. ‘Where’s the plan? Where’s the vision? What’s he waiting for? What does he actually want power for?’ he lamented.

In the original book on which The Wizard Of Oz was based, Dorothy’s travelling companion finally unburdens himself. ‘You people with hearts,’ he says, ‘have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart. And so I must be very careful.’

Labour’s rusty Tin Man needs to find one. Before the Tories’ fleet-footed new leader starts to run rings around him.