Another week of political fireworks with the US Election results and Tory Leadership announcement.
Read all about it in this week's Who's Top Who's Not!
Top - Kemi Badenoch
The election of the new Leader of the Opposition (LOTO) usually stays in frontline news for a few days, but given the week's trans-Atlantic news, it already feels like a distant memory that Kemi Badenoch secured the Conservative leadership (an organisational blunder, perhaps?).
The beginning of the week saw Badenoch assemble her front bench team, with some appointees scoring better than others. Overall, Badenoch has shown that she is aware of the party rifts and hopes to bring the whole Parliamentary Party together. Party unity is important but so is strategic alignment so we shall have to see how well the combative Badenoch works with her new Shadow Chancellor and holder of the One Nation flame, Mel Stride.
The week only got better as Badenoch handled her first PMQs well enough and was able to use her first – to repeat Politico’s pun – Trump card. PMQs also highlighted how Badenoch wants to contrast her Conservative Party against Labour. Whether intentional or not, Badenoch not having been the LOTO during the budget gave her time to reflect on the policies and provided her with fresh ammunition at the dispatch box.
Middle - Robert Jenrick
He may have lost the war, but at least he got a shadow ministerial position. Jenrick’s surreal rise and fall in the Conservative election feels like a Thick of It storyline – initially leading, then tanking, only to be raised up again by (rumoured) miscalculations from Cleverly’s followers.
Despite losing the leadership, he scored a Shadow Secretary of State role after a few rounds of negotiation regarding his exact position. This was perhaps Badenoch’s first misstep – by immediately offering Jenrick a place in her shadow cabinet, she gave him leverage to negotiate, meaning he could flex a bit to get a good brief. It could also be politically tricky as Badenoch and Jenrick now hold different views over ECHR membership; Reform and Labour will both smell blood in the political water.
Bottom – Sir Keir Starmer
Not with a clap, but a sigh. This week has not been one Starmer will recall with fondness.
Starmer gave the green light to raising university tuition fees by a maximum of £285.00 - increasing the annual cost to £9,535. It did not take long for the new Shadow Education Secretary, Laura Trott, to remind Starmer of his 2020 Labour leadership policy to scrap tuition fees altogether. Then there are all the young people who voted favourably for Starmer in the election this year – we’ve seen the spectre of Nick Clegg’s ‘pledges’ haunting Starmer.
While some commentators have highlighted the savvy PR move to announce the tuition fees just before the US elections, the outcome of said election – with Donald Trump storming through swing states and making his way back to the White House – will cause him a bigger headache than the tuition fee rise.
Old tweets from Labour ministers critiquing Trump’s "character flaws" have resurfaced, reminding Starmer that Trump’s friends (Musk, Farage, Johnson) are Labour’s enemies. More pressing still, post-Brexit UK leans heavily on US support, and Trump has already announced his intention to implement tariffs, potentially including on the UK. His re-election could cast a long shadow over Starmer’s hopes of driving UK economic growth.