Keir Starmer looks like a PM in peril as he takes one hell of a thumping at PMQs

Sir Keir Starmer looked like a Prime Minister in peril as a gleeful Kemi Badenoch tore into him in the Commons for his litany of U-turns while grim-faced Labour MPs – hundreds of whom will fear for their jobs – watched the spectacle. It was not so much Prime Minister’s Questions as Prime Minister’s Flagellation.

She welcomed the U-turn on plans for compulsory digital IDs, deriding it as a “rubbish policy”. The message was clear: The Government was foolish to embrace the idea and is too weak to push it through. The Tory leader said: “I’m sorry to tell him, but Labour MPs have been looking stupid for a long time.”

She reeled off a list of other U-turns – winter fuel payments, WASPI women, the two-child benefit cap, the grooming gangs scandal, and inheritance tax on farming families. Her own backbenchers went wild.

Mrs Badenoch’s political reality has been transformed. When she arrived as Conservative leader, Sir Keir could pillory her for the worst moments of 14 years of Tory government. Now Labour has a record of its own which she delights in attacking, and the PM keeps adding to her pile of ammunition.

She pushed him to add to the roster of U-turns by dropping plans to curtail jury trials and “abolish business rates for the high street”.

Mrs Badenoch clearly thinks she will outlast the PM and gives every sign of wanting to finish him off.

“The Prime Minister doesn’t need to worry about me,” she said. “I’m all right.” This assertion stung, even though it may be tested in the May elections when Tories face a battle to stop a conquest of blue seats by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

She grabbed every opportunity to exploit unhappiness in Labour ranks.

“This Prime Minister treats his MPs so badly,” she said. “They follow his lead and he hangs them out to dry every time.”

The Conservative leader claimed he forces them to “defend the indefensible” and did not hesitate to deliver the most personal of attacks.

“The reason he U-turns all the time is he is clueless,” she said, before going on to compare him to a plastic bag, blown about in the wind.

Sir Keir did not have to put up with this type of denigration in his days as an influential human rights lawyer or as director of public prosecutions, and he gives zero indication of enjoying these confrontations.

When he spoke, he sounded more like a leader of the opposition raking over the Tory record. But he was noisily heckled from the Tory benches, and Labour MPs provided little covering fire.

Parliament has just returned from the Christmas recess, but Labour MPs look like they need a break.

The Conservatives are in much jollier form. They did not seem fazed when Sir Keir brought up former Tory education secretary Nadhim Zahawi’s defection to Reform UK, describing the party as a “laundry service” for scandal-hit politicians.

The Tories are still far behind Reform in the polls, but at last they are level-pegging – or even slightly ahead – of Labour. They now have policies of their own to champion, such as on scrapping stamp duty and pulling out of the ECHR, and they can present themselves as an alternative Government.

Mrs Badenoch faces a multitude of challenges before the Conservatives will stand a chance of winning power again, but the polls show she is gaining credibility with voters as a potential prime minister.

The difficulty for football-loving Sir Keir is that he gets to his feet at PMQs like a manager on match day who is losing the confidence of both the relegation-threatened team and the fans. Labour MPs dutifully still turn up for the weekly question session, but the real question is: Who cheers for Keir?

When only one in 10 voters in the traditional Labour heartland of Wales plan to back the party in the looming Welsh Parliament election, what chance is there Sir Keir can lead a revival in support nationwide?

Each time the PM is blasted by Mrs Badenoch, MPs leave the chamber reminded of abandoned policies and gaffes on his watch. Men and women who have dreamt for decades of winning a seat in Parliament now know they are likely to be kicked out by the voters in 2029 – like people across the country who worry about unemployment, hundreds of them must wonder where they will find a new source of livelihood.

This drains morale, and when Labour MPs look to the future, they see a host of dangers. If the Government pushes ahead with sweeping changes to the system of support for children with special educational needs, then legions of politically engaged parents will be worried and potentially outraged.

The weakness of the Prime Minister was brutally exposed last year when the Government had to abandon attempts to limit benefits eligibility. The PM is in an even more fragile position now than he was then, so Mrs Badenoch can harangue him as a leader incapable of tackling the nation’s spiralling welfare bill.

A King’s Speech is expected later this year, and this is a chance to unite and energise the party. But does anyone think a PM whose political capital has been torched can deliver historic reform of the House of Lords when the peers have seen off threats for decades?

Labour has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to use its giant majority to deliver a social care system that will not be a national scandal. However, there is no expectation that it will implement such a historic reform.

Power has drained away from Labour since it won its landslide in 2024. Most worryingly for Labour MPs, it is far from clear that a change at the top will reboot this struggling Government.