Kemi Badenoch had a relatively good PMQs. But that was last week, when she had Keir Starmer on the back foot for a bit on mobile phones in schools, and no one was paying any attention because it was just before the spring statement. Today it was back to normal, with Badenoch underwhelming and Keir Starmer comfortably seeing off her various criticisms with punchy, but unsurprising, comments about the Tory record. Badenoch’s best moment came when she asked about Birmingham council. [Starmer] doesn’t want to talk about Birmingham and that’s because he knows the situation, so I’ll say it again: 17,000 tonnes of rubbish on Birmingham’s streets. Normally a state of emergency is called for natural disasters, not Labour ones. But her main line of attack was on the economy generally, and particularly what the Conservatives are calling the “jobs tax” (the rise in employer national insurance contributions, which is just coming into force). There is plenty of economic evidence available to the effect that businesses say this will make them less likely to hire new staff, or more likely to cut hours, but instead Badenoch focused on the Tory claim that this will cost families £3,500 by the end of this parliament – a back-of-the-envelope calculation that has not been adopted by serious economists. Starmer brushed this aside quite easily, and mostly the economic exchanges sounded even more like a dialogue of the deaf than the usually do. Starmer and Badenoch threw slogans at each other, without engaging much with what the other had to say. Starmer’s slogans were more compelling, because they were mostly about how dire things were under the last government, which meant they were largely true. This was the main problem for Badenoch, but another was that she did not get much back-up from her own MPs. Towards the end of the session Greg Smith asked a question that backed up the Badenoch “jobs tax” critique. (See 12.36pm.) On its own, a single question like this is unlikely to make much impression. But half a dozen of them might. (To be fair to the Tories, they did not get half a dozen backbench questions. They just got three, and the other two were devoted to Scunthorpe steelworks and the child killer Colin Pitchfork. There is a lottery to decide who gets called at PMQs, and maybe the Conservatives were just unlucky in their allocation this week. But maybe some of the, are not bothering to bid for a question. In total just four Tory MPs spoke at PMQs today – exactly the same as the number of Liberal Democrats who got a question.) In the absence of forensic questioning, Starmer can see off Tory attacks by referring to the party’s record quite easily. In the chamber, that works well. But, in the country at large, these arguments may have a shorter shelf-life than Labour was hoping. More in Common published some interesting polling last week suggesting that only 27% of people think the last Conservative government is to blame for Britain’s low growth and that 51% of people think the government is focusing too much on blaming the Tories. Alberta Costa (Con) says there is a parole board hearing coming up for Colin Pitchfork. Does Starmer agree that people who brutally rape and murder young women, like Pitchfork, should normally spend most of their natural life in prison. Starmer thanks Costa for raising this. He says as DPP he dealt with cases like this, and he knows the impact they have on families. Greg Smith (Con) asks about the “jobs tax”, and says it has led to a firm in his constituency already having to lay off staff. Starmer says he would be happy to explain to Smith’s constituents how the Tories left a £22bn black hole in the nation’s finances, and crashed the economy. Imogen Walker (Lab) says one in six Scots are on a waiting list. But in England waiting lists are coming down. Does the PM agrees the SNP is to blame, and they should stop blaming everyone else? Starmer says waiting lists in Scotland have risen 46% in a year. He had to check the figure because it was so staggering, he says. Scotland’s NHS is in “desperate need for reform”. But the SNP has no plan and no strategy, he says. Luke Murphy (Lab) asks about GP services. Starmer says the government is scraping unnecessary targets for GPs, bringing back the family doctor, and encouraging online appointments to end the 8am scramble for appointments. Jack Abbott (Lab) says a school in Ipswich will be one of the first benefiting from a breakfast club. Starmer says 750 breakfast clubs are opening this month. This will save working families £450 a year, he says. And he says the government has today announced funding for 300 school-based nurseries. Ian Roome (Lib Dem) asks about North Devon hospital, and asks if the operating theatres can be kept open after 2027. Starmer says the Tory promised to upgrade the hospital was never funded. A minister will be visiting the hospital, he says. Gavin Robinson, the DUP leader, asks what will happen if the tariffs imposed by President Trump on the EU, and the EU’s retaliatory tariffs, have an impact on Northern Ireland imports from the US because of the post-Brexit deal. (That is because the would count as imports to the EU, not imports to the UK, which will not impose retaliatory tariffs.) Starmer says this is a serious issue. He says the government wants to protect Northern Irish businesses, and is taking a “calm and pragmatic” approach. He does not go into details about how this might be achieved. Davey asks about the private equity firm KKR taking a stake in Thames Water. He says he hopes this won’t lead to more pollution. Starmer says the Tories had an appalling record on water. He says the Water Act will lead to improvements. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Starmer has shown commendable leadership over Ukraine, with his plan for a military coalition of the willing. Will he now lead an economic coalition of the willing standing up to the US? (See 9.26am.) Starmer says Davey is always trying to make him take a false choice between the US and Europe. I think that’s the wrong choice on defence, on security intelligence, for reasons that we’ve rehearsed across this chamber. I also think it’s wrong on trade and the economy. We have a balanced trade relationship with the US, and I believe that our interests are best served by calmly trying to secure a deal which is in our national interest, whilst at the same time preparing and leaving all options on the table. Badenoch says the Labour government lost the country’s most experienced trade negotiator. She asks what Starmer is doing to protect the car industry. Starmer says Badenoch was trade secretary. He says she cannot criticise Labour for not having a trade deal with the US when she did not negotiate one. Badenoch says the UK had the fastest growing economy in the G7 when the Tories left office. Starmer accuses Badenoch of talking the country down. He says growth is forecast to rise over the course of this parliament. Badenoch turns to Birmingham, and says normally an emergency is declared because of an act of nature, not an act by Labour. She asks if Rachel Reeves will stick to her fiscal rules. Starmer says the situation in Birmingham is unacceptable. He supports the council in declaring an emergency. Badenoch says she does not want pensioners to be poorer. She asks if Starmer regrets promising to freeze council tax when that has happened. Starmer says, if Badenoch was opposed to people being poorer, she should have resigned when she was in government. He says Badenoch was minister in charge of the council tax. And he says Tory councillors want the cap on council tax increases removed. Badenoch says Starmer claims to be bringing stability, but he is bringing fragility. She says the jobs tax will cost families £3,500. Starmer says this is a “fantasy figure”. And at Badenoch’s press conference she could not say if she would reverse Labour’s decisions, he says. He says Badench wants the extra NHS investment paid for by the taxes in the budget, but she opposes those tax rises at the same time. Kemi Badenoch says from Sunday Labour’s “jobs tax” means firms will have to cut wages, put up prices or sack staff. What should they do? Starmer says he is clearing up the mess left by the Tories. The national living wage has increased by £1,400, he says. The warm homes discount has been extended. And wages are going up faster than prices. Under the Tories we had the worst record on living standards on record, he says. Keir Starmer starts by saying he spoke to President Zelenskyy on Monday, and Zelenskyy asked Starmer to thank Hoyle for attending. On tariffs, Starmer says: A trade war is in nobody’s interest and the country deserves, and we will take, a calm, pragmatic approach. That is why constructive talks are progressing to agree a wider economic prosperity deal with the US. That is why we are working with all industries and sectors likely to be impacted. Our decisions will always be guided by our national interests, and that’s why we have prepared for all eventualities, and we will rule nothing out. Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, starts by saying he recently joined fellow parliamentarian speakers at an event in Ukraine to mark the third anniversary of the Bucha massacre. Ahead of the Green party’s UQ on Gaza (see 11.43am), the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Ellie Chowns, has put out this statement. The Green party condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli government’s brutal decision to expand its military operations in Gaza. Seizing large areas of territory and forcibly displacing countless Gazans to create so-called “security zones” would be a further violation of international law against a population already devastated by 18 months of conflict. “his is not security; it is domination and erasure. It would constitute ethnic cleansing and further collective punishment on a mass scale, and it would only deepen the unimaginable suffering already endured by the people of Gaza. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question at PMQs. PMQs is starting at noon. Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor. Patrick Harvie, arguably the longest serving party leader in UK politics, has announced he is standing down as co-convenor of the Scottish Greens after nearly 17 years in the role. A Scottish Greens MSP since 2003, Harvie had recently taken a leave of absence from Holyrood for an operation and recuperation. He announced today he will not contest this summer’s party leadership election. As well as serving as party co-convenor since 2008, Harvie also brokered the power sharing deal with the Scottish National party government under Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 which saw Greens getting ministerial roles for the first time in the UK. In a statement, he said: At the start of devolution, few people regarded the Greens as a serious political force. But as we have grown, learned and developed we have become the most significant, sustained new movement in Scottish politics for generations. Given the growing urgency of the climate emergency, that movement is greatly needed. Green solutions are more necessary than ever, and we have been the only party clearly making the case for the action needed to tackle growing inequality and the climate and nature emergency. Others are happy to set targets, but then actively resist the action needed to meet them. Harvie introduced a rent freeze while a minister, and co-wrote the Bute House agreement in 2021 which committed the Scottish government to more ambitious public transport, climate and housing policies, including free bus travel for under-21s and a pilot project to abolish peak rail fares, which has since been discontinued. That agreement collapsed in acrimony after Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor as SNP leader and first minister, decided many Green policies were damaging the SNP’s popularity, and unilaterally ended the power-sharing agreement. Under this leadership the Scottish Greens also shifted to become an avowedly pro-independence party, with Harvie a leading spokesman for the Yes Scotland campaign during the 2014 referendum campaign. He also vigorously championed trans rights, adopting a stance which saw a few senior Green figures quit the party. There will be two urgent questions in the Commons after PMQs. At around 12.30pm a Foreign Office minister will respond to a question from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, about the Chagos Islands. And then another Foreign Office minister (or the same one?) will reply to a UQ from the Green co-leader Carla Denyer about Gaza. After that Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, will make a statement about nursery provision. Plaid Cymru says Britain should respond to President Trump’s tariffs by rejoining the EU’s single market and customs union. Llinos Medi, the party’s business spokesperson, said: With new US tariffs coming, Welsh businesses face even more uncertainty. The UK must make a strategic decision: with 58.6% of Welsh exports going to the EU, we must provide stable access to European markets by rejoining the single market and customs union, allowing us to stand up to Trump’s reckless moves. Keir Starmer is not planning to speak to President Trump today ahead of the tariffs announcement, Steven Swinford from the Times reports. Sounds like any hopes of a last-ditch concession from Donald Trump ahead of his tariffs announcement are fading Keir Starmer is not planning to speak to him today, but there are hopes that the economic deal giving Britain a carve-out can be signed as soon as next week. Sources talking about ‘days or weeks’ But in truth No 10 doesn’t know what Trump is planning or when concessions could be made. All deeply uncertain this morning David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is today due to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement with Serbia intended to disrupt people smuggling gangs, the Foreign Office says. It says almost 22,000 people were recorded using the Western Balkans to transit into Europe last year. Lammy says: With the world becoming more dangerous and unpredictable, the Western Balkans is of critical importance to the UK and Europe’s collective security, and the UK remains committed to building resilience and stability in the region. Heathrow Airport was warned about its power supply in the days before it closed because of an outage, PA Media says. In its story from the opening of this morning’s transport committee hearing in the Commons PA reports: Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said there were a “couple of incidents” which made him concerned. The airport was closed to all flights on until about 6pm on Friday 21 March, after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation which started late the previous night. This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys. Wicking told the transport select committee he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on 15 March about his concerns, and the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on 19 March. He said: “It was following a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply that, on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. “That obviously made me concerned and, as such, I raised the point I wanted to understand better the overall resilience of the airport.” Wicking said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”. Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during the outage would have been “disastrous”. He told the committee: “It became quite clear we could not operate the airport safely quite early in this process, and that is why we closed the airport. “If we had not done that, we would have had thousands of passengers stranded at the airport at high risk to personal injury, gridlocked roads around the airport, because don’t forget 65,000 houses and other institutions were powered down. “Traffic lights didn’t work, just to give you an example, many things didn’t work. Parts of the civil infrastructure didn’t work. “So the risk of having literally tens of thousands of people stranded at the airport, where we have would have nowhere to put them, we could not process them, would have been a disastrous scenario.” The conventional wisdom in Westminster political circles is that, while picking a fight with the US might make an inspiring scene in a Richard Curtis drama, in practice it is never a good idea. But yesterday YouGov published polling showing that in Britain, and in other major European countries, there is strong public support for the sort of retaliatory tariffs being proposed by the Liberal Democrats. (See 9.26am.) YouGov says 71% of Britons would support retaliatory tariffs, and only 11% would be opposed. Alexandra Topping has a story with more on what Bridget Phillipson said in her morning interview round. Phillipson said the UK would not engage in a “kneejerk” response to any tariffs imposed by President Trump – which is also what Keir Starmer was saying yesterday. Public satisfaction with the NHS is at a record low and dissatisfaction is at its highest, with the deepest discontent about A&E, GP and dental care, Denis Campbell and Tobi Thomas report. Comments on the blog will open at 10am. Good morning. Keir Starmer is taking his last PMQs before the Easter recess at noon, but the big event today will come at 9pm tonight (UK time) when President Trump announces sweeping global tariffs, upending the free trade consensus seen as the basis for a century or more of western prosperity. Here is our latest global story on this, and here is our overnight UK story, by Pippa Crerar, Heather Stewart and Richard Partington. Bridget Phillipson was doing interview duty on behalf of the government this morning. As education secretary, she is not involved in trade policy and her message was much the same as Jonathan Reynolds’ when he was in the same broadcast studios yesterday. She said that the UK was “well-placed as a nation” to reach an economic deal with the US (which might lead to tariffs on the UK being reduced) and that talks were still underway. Keir Starmer’s stragegy – which can be crudely but accurately described as sucking up to President Trump in the hope getting the best possible outcome for Britain – is supported by Labour MPs, and also by the Conservative party. At a press conference yesterday Kemi Badenoch said that the UK should definitely rule out retaliatory tariffs, instead of holding the option open, but otherwise she is backing Starmer on this issue. And the difference is slight because Starmer does not sound at all likely to deploy retaliatory tariffs anyway. But others are urging Starmer to take a different approach. The Liberal Democrats have been urging the government to be much more robust with the US president, and today they are escalating that, saying Starmer should be forming a united front with the EU and Canada to fight Trump with retaliatory tariffs and other measures. In an overnight statement Calum Miller, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said: Despite weeks of refusing to criticise Donald Trump’s damaging behaviour, it’s now increasingly apparent that the government will not secure a carve out for the UK ahead of Trump’s global tariff war. Trump has shown himself to be an unreliable partner on the economy. No one, not even the US’s oldest allies, are safe from the economic harm reaped by this White House. We need to end this trade war as quickly as possible. That means working with our Canadian and European allies in a united front against Trump, including retaliatory tariffs where necessary – as well as negotiating a bespoke new customs union agreement with the EU to better protect British businesses. Intriguingly, Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, and a journalist with extensive establisment contacts, says there are a lot of people in business and politics who agree with the Liberal Democrats on this. He explained why in a long post on social media last night. Here’s an extract. Starmer has organised his military coalition of “willing” nations to defend Ukraine against Putin in the event of a peace deal. My conversations with senior government officials, business leaders and economists reveal a hunger for Starmer – or Canada’s Carney, or any elected leader of a sizeable democratic nation – to organise an “economic coalition of the willing”, to champion free trade against Trump and his tariffs. The concept, half of which I have explained before, is to counter Trump’s bullying trade tactics – tomorrow’s announcement by him of tariffs on all imports to America - by threatening collectively to impose tariffs on America’s exports double or treble whatever his tariff rates turn out to be. This in itself would terrify American manufacturers and farmers, if it was a collective threat by the UK, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Australia, inter alia. Will this idea get any traction? Maybe not today, but at some point in the future it could take off. There is some evidence that No 10 is nervous about being seen as too accommodating to Trump. Yesterday, in a briefing so implausible no one took it seriously, Downing Street in effect sought to blame the king for Trump getting a state visit! Here is the agenda for the day. 9am: Kim Leadbeater holds a press conference about her assisted dying bill, which has finished its committee stage and is back in the Commons chamber later this month. 9.15am: Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye gives evidence to the Commons transport committee about the electricity substation fire that closed the airport for a day. Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs. 2.15pm; Lord Hermer, the attorney general, gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights. 2.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee. 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Author: Andrew Sparrow