Politics ed davey Kemi Badenoch PMQs

Ed Davey gave Kemi Badenoch a Paddington-style ‘hard stare’ that was nothing short of epic and people loved him for it

John Plunkett. Updated June 24th, 2026

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To PMQs now, the first one since Keir Starmer announced he would be leaving as leader of the Labour Party and prime minister.

It’s traditional at times like this for rival politicians to put their differences aside and show a little bit of empathy, humanity, all that kind of thing.

So it may not come as a great surprise that Tory leader Kemi Badenoch decided to do none of those things, levelling insult after insult at Starmer’s cabinet and his successor, Andy Burnham, and in this instance education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.

So much so that she was called up on it by the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle.

And we mention it because while Starmer played a largely straight bat to the leader of the opposition’s barbs, it didn’t go unnoticed by Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, whose epic hard stare was straight out of the Paddington playbook.

Stared at her for so long we thought our watch had stopped (no word yet on whether he later had a marmalade sandwich for lunch).

And here’s precisely what these people made of that.

We’re with this person.

Source @mikoh123