Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch will face each other at PMQs for the first time in three weeks.
The PM is likely to face questions about transgender rights following a controversial Supreme Court ruling last week. On Tuesday No10 revealed he no longer believes a trans woman is a woman amid questions over same-sex spaces.
Ms Badenoch is expected to seize on the issue at the dispatch box, but is likely to face difficult clapbacks over Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick’s latest antics. She faces calls to sack Mr Jenrick after a leaked recording revealed him hinting at a general election pact with Nigel Farage’s Reform – something the Tory leader has ruled out.
Mr Jenrick, who was runner up in the divided Conservatives’ most recent leadership contest, said he is “determined” to “bring this coalition together” before the next general election. The remarks reveal a deep split within the party leadership over how to deal with Nigel Farage.
It could be a spiky session, with party leaders on the campaign trail ahead of local elections next week. Ms Badenoch has been accused of “throwing in the towel” with defeatist comments in an interview with the BBC.
Keir Starmer opens by paying tribute to the Pope, who died on Monday.
The PM will attend the pontiff’s funeral in Rome on Saturday. He praised Pope Francis’ “courage and leadership”. He went on to wish MPs a happy St George’s Day.
Keir Starmer has branded Reform UK “a bunch of moaners without any answers” as he shrugged off the local election threat from Nigel Farage.
The Prime Minister turned his fire on the right-wing party, saying: “They stand on the side lines moaning, that’s all they do.” And ahead of St George’s Day, he said Labour was the “patriotic party” and accused Reform of fawning over Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin.
Read the full interview with Keir Starmer here
Kemi Badenoch has been accused of already throwing in the towel before next week’s local elections.
The under-fire Tory leader conceded the results will be “very difficult” for her party as experts predict hundreds of Conservative councillors will lose their seats. But she went on to claim it was a positive thing that newspapers are no longer filled with stories of Tory squabbling.
Ms Badenoch told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “We lost last year in a historic defeat. These elections next week are going to be very difficult for Conservatives because the last time we fought them [2021] we were on a high.
“Two-thirds of the seats four years ago, we won. There’s no way we’re going to be able to do that again.”
The Tory chief also bizarrely claimed stories of Conservative infighting and rows no longer existed. She said: “I think the biggest thing that people will notice is if you picked up a paper this time last year you would have been reading about Tory rows and infighting.
“All of that is gone.” The comments were seized on by the Lib Dems, who accused her of giving up. Deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: ” Kemi Badenoch has already thrown in the towel before a single vote has been counted in next week’s local elections.
“The Conservative Party doesn’t have any answers on the big issues facing the country, because their fingerprints of failure are all over them.”
Keir Starmer no longer believes trans women are women, Downing Street has said.
The PM is expected to be pressed about a Supreme Court ruling that could pave the way for transgender people to be barred from same-sex spaces. On Tuesday, asked if the Prime Minister still believes trans women are women, the PM’s official spokesman said: “No. The Supreme Court judgement has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman – that is set out clearly by court judgement.”
In 2022, Mr Starmer told The Times: “A woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view — that is actually the law.”
Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has spectacularly broken ranks with Kemi Badenoch as a leaked recording revealed he may push to join forces with Reform.
The Shadow Justice Secretary, who was runner up in the divided Conservatives’ most recent leadership contest, said he is “determined” to “bring this coalition together” before the next general election. The remarks reveal a deep split within the party leadership over how to deal with Nigel Farage, with Ms Badenoch emphatically ruling out a deal.
The Tory leader now faces pressure to sack Mr Jenrick. He told young Tories at the UCL Conservative assocation last month that he would try “one way or another” to make sure the two parties do not compete next time around. In a recording shared with Sky News, he said: “[Reform UK] continues to do well in the polls. And my worry is that they become a kind of permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the British political scene. And if that is the case, and I say, I am trying to do everything I can to stop that being the case, then life becomes a lot harder for us, because the right is not united.
“And then you head towards the general election, where the nightmare scenario is that Keir Starmer sails in through the middle as a result of the two parties being disunited. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared for that to happen.
“I want the fight to be united. And so, one way or another, I’m determined to do that and to bring this coalition together and make sure we unite as a nation as well.”
Ms Badenoch has repeatedly ruled out a deal with Mr Farage. In an interview with The Telegraph in March she mocked the rival party, saying: “Only five of them and they’ve already had a massive squabble and lost 20% of their MPs. If they can’t unite with five people, how are they going to unite the Right?”
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