Kemi Badenoch took her seat in the Commons to cheers from her own side, and gave a little wave to her husband Hamish, who was watching up in the gallery. She would, in the ensuing 30 minutes, be offering plenty more gestures to the room, but this was the last friendly one.

The atmosphere in the chamber was a little strained. MPs had woken to the news that angry orange toddler Donald Trump was going to be leading the free world again. Not even Conservatives are sure that this is good news. Over breakfast, we watched his victory speech, getting a taste of the oratory that had so charmed a nation, the rambling mix of non-sequiturs, self-aggrandisement and vindictive attacks that turns out to speak to something deep in the American soul. 

Democracy is a vastly complicated beast, of course, with tens of millions of people making their own decisions for their own reasons. So it was helpful to be reminded, as we sipped our morning coffee, that in the end, this election was about the British pundit class. 

Our leading political podcast, The Rest Is Politics, had performed the valuable service of flying Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell out to America to be humiliated live on YouTube for the entertainment of the nation at this dark hour. A couple of days before the election, Stewart had assured the world that the race wasn’t even close. “Kamala Harris will win.”

This piece of forecasting had turned out to be about as successful as Stewart’s 2019 bid to turn the Conservative Party into a haven for liberal Brexit-doubters. Now he had the good grace to explain the basis for his prediction. “It’s all turned out to be wrong,” Stewart went on, “completely wrong.” He sprawled back in his chair, looking like the son of an earl who’d just lost the family estate at the roulette table.

“It was a bet on hope,” Stewart concluded, the sense hanging heavy that the American people had let him, and indeed the entire podcast, down. Less successful political commentators, present company very much included, might express horror at the idea that this approach, presenting your wishes as analysis, is what sells out the O2, but of course it does. Something on which both Stewart and Trump would agree is that you can do very well out of telling folk what they want to hear.  

But I know the question you’re asking: what did Sadiq Khan have to say about the election? From Beijing to Baltimore, the world was waiting for London’s mayor to comment. Fortunately for all those holding their breath, he swiftly issued a statement. “I know that many Londoners will be anxious,” it began. “We will always be pro-women, pro-diversity, pro-climate and pro-human rights.” In an uncertain world, it’s good to know we can always rely on one man not to miss a chance to tell us how nice he is. 

Keir Starmer, who will actually have to deal with the Manchild of Mar-a-Lago, was careful to open prime minister’s questions with congratulations. He also offered greetings to Badenoch. We watched to see how this first clash of titans would turn out. 

“I will be taking a different approach to the last opposition, by being a constructive opposition,” Badenoch began, a pledge that didn’t even last until her next breath. When Starmer and David Lammy had met Trump in September, she asked, had they apologised for the Foreign Secretary’s previous description of the president-elect as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”?

It was classic Badenoch: nothing could have been more on brand for the extremely online Tory leader than asking about an old tweet. Labour had previously opposed the idea of Trump addressing Parliament, she said. Now they should “show they can be more than student politicians” by inviting the Donald to address both houses. 

It was an open goal for the prime minister. “The leader of the opposition is giving a masterclass on student politics!” he replied, and indeed it was very hard to see what her goal was, beyond embarrassing Lammy. The foreign secretary is hardly the only person who said nasty things about Trump and now has to work with him. The Vice President-elect comes rather higher up the list. Dealing with Trump seems to mainly involve sucking up to him, and there’s evidence he enjoys this most from people who were previously rude. 

We had never seen anything like it: the leader of the opposition heckling MPs during PMQs

“The prime minister does not answer the questions,” Badenoch went on, “he just reads the lines the officials have prepared for him.” She repeated this again a little later, accusing Starmer of reading “scripted lines”. It would have been more effective if Labour MPs hadn’t noticed that she was holding a piece of paper with the questions printed on it in large type. “If she is going to complain about scripted answers,” Starmer replied, “it is probably best not to read that from a script.” His own side fell about and called for more.

That was the end of their exchange, but far from the end of Badenoch’s contribution to the session. Labour MPs had come equipped with questions about her various views, on everything from autism to maternity pay. The usual practice for the leader of the opposition would be to sit unmoving through this, or perhaps affect an intense interest in a piece of paper. Not Badenoch. As her quotes were read out, she chuntered, shook her head, even gestured for one speaker to sit down. One of her complaints — “That is not what I said!” — was loud enough to be audible up in the gallery, despite the noise of the chamber. We had never seen anything like it: the leader of the opposition heckling MPs during PMQs. Truly, the age of Badenoch is going to be a time of wonders.