Badenoch's Rebuilt Front Bench Faces Burnham at First PMQs Today
Kemi Badenoch’s reshuffled shadow cabinet has its first outing at noon as Mr Burnham takes Prime Minister’s Questions for the first time. Andrew Griffith replaces Mel Stride as shadow chancellor, Tom Tugendhat takes foreign affairs from the sacked Priti Patel, and Katie Lam moves to communities after James Cleverly quit to run for London mayor. “Kemi has to change tack because she’s facing different opposition,” said Tory polling expert Lord Hayward. “Everyone in the party knows she will have to adapt.”
Reshuffles are usually about the reshuffler, and this one tells us Ms Badenoch believes her survival depends on an economic argument: a new Treasury unit under Mr Griffith, built to prosecute the coming Budget, is a bet that Mr Burnham’s spending instincts — and a bond market already in revolt — will hand the Conservatives their opening. The risk sits in the same appointment: Mr Griffith helped write the Truss mini-Budget, a fact Labour’s attack unit will have rehearsed before lunch. The subtext her allies volunteer — being “battle-ready” for a snap 2027 election — concedes how quickly politics has accelerated under a new prime minister. Watch today’s exchanges: first PMQs meetings set a template that tends to endure, and both leaders know it.