Partner bickers back with toddler

I’m struggling with my partner “bickering” back with our toddler (2.5 years), it’s not that he argues or shouts etc but he’s a nightmare for forgetting himself and bickering back with her which just escalates the tantrums a lot of the time.

Eg of what I mean - this morning she had a tantrum building because she wanted to go downstairs for breakfast after a 12 hour straight sleep so we knew she would be hungry. We were halfway through getting dressed after dressing my daughter. If I was handling this I’d have said “could you check out of the window for me and see if the ducks are still there before we go downstairs? I’m just finishing getting dressed and then we’re going down” (We live opposite a canal and she likes to look for the ducks) and normally that would have distracted her long enough for us to finish getting dressed and go down before the tantrum really started. My other half handled this one though and he responded “we can’t go downstairs yet we’re not ready” which isn’t necessarily WRONG but at the same time it just lit the fuse on the tantrum and the hungry toddler exploded with rage because it didn’t give her a timescale of how long she’d have to wait. And then he got frustrated that she was having a tantrum that he’d helped exacerbate 😩

We’ll have a conversation about it and he’ll reflect back and agree he needs to stop bickering back with her and try some more redirection/distraction but it’s always short lived and before we know it he’s bickering back again or biting at the tantrums instead of either redirecting or ignoring.

When I’m home alone with her the tantrums are still there but I can diffuse them a lot quicker without giving into her.

Is anyone else’s other half like this? And how do you get them to stop doing it? It’s really annoying but I know he’s not doing it deliberately he works long hours and just gets quickly irritated by the pitch/volume of the tantrums as she’s discovered she can scream 🥴 I’m naturally a lot more patient and can tune it out if redirection doesn’t work. And once she’s calmed down I’ll have a discussion with her about what made her upset.