Has Kemi never asked a planted question?

At PMQs today Kemi Badenoch declared Paul Waugh, a Labour MP and former lobby journalist to be the “toady of the week” because he had the honour of asking a planted question. Helpful questions, as you are no doubt aware, are drafted and distributed by No.10 to loyal backbenchers in order to give the Prime Minister a bit of breathing space to talk about themselves. (A few weeks ago one such question was ruled out of order by the Speaker because, being a party political attack on the Tories, had nothing to do with the work of the PM.)

Today Waugh’s less-than-incisive question was asking Starmer whether he would like to chat a bit about how amazing the Labour free school meals policy was. The PM, after suffering his most bruising night yet and with a Chancellor literally crying beside him, was happy to oblige the house in a bit of self-congratulation.

As always with Badenoch, she shoots from the hip. Nobody, except for the PM, likes the planted question and probably most backbenchers hate themselves for asking it. PS wonders out loud though, is it at all possible that criticising the practice will have any negative consequences for a future Badenoch Government? PS is opposed to predicting the future, on grounds of Christian morality, but even I can see it is just possible that team Badenoch will not dispense with the practice if by some miracle, the only leader of the opposition with ethnic enemies in Nigeria, becomes PM.

Perhaps Mrs. Badenoch has even been guilty of asking planted questions herself? In April 2018 as Prime Minister Theresa May was at the dispatch box fresh from bombing Syria and was coming under fire by the leader of the opposition who was declaring such strikes illegal. It was at this moment that the member for Saffron Walden herself asked this zinger of a question which really put a knife to the throat of the PM and showed she had no regard for her own promotion:

Does the Prime Minister believe that when urgent targeted action is required, waiting for a parliamentary vote could not just put our armed forces in harm’s way but give those stockpiling chemical weapons time to conceal them?

You’ll be shocked to learn that was exactly what the Prime Minister did believe. 

Or perhaps she was guilty of the helpful plant during a PMQs in May 2018, during which Theresa May was promised a statue likeness of herself to be erected in Wellingborough by the eurosceptic Peter Bone. (This was not one of May’s trickiest PMQs you understand) Mrs. Badenoch used her voice in the mother of parliaments to ask the Prime Minister this:

Carver barracks in my constituency of Saffron Walden is home to the Royal Engineers’ bomb disposal unit, which carries out life-saving but very dangerous work on behalf of all us. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what the Government’s veterans strategy is, and how it will help soldiers such as those at Carver barracks in their transition to civilian life?

You will be amazed that the Prime Minister had a ready-made and detailed answer to this question. 

But then again, maybe the famously combative LOTO just really loves bombs?