PMQs live blog
Peter Hoskin 11:47amWelcome to Coffee House's live blog of PMQs. After Monday's PBR, you can expect the economy to be the main topic of debate - with Cameron and Clegg trying to highlight the weasels and tax bombshells that Brown has in store for us. Things will kick off at 1200, so join us then.
1203: Here we go.
1204: First question from Sir Peter Tapsell: "Will the PM apologise to the public for wrecking the British economy?"
1205: Important point from Colin Burgon on money lenders targeting young people.
1206: Cameron now. "If the government doesn't have a secret plan to raise VAT why did the Treasury Minister put his signature to it?" Brown talks about raises to VAT during the Tory governments in the 80s and 90s.
1208: Cameron says it's "absolutely clear" that Lbour are planning a VAT bombshell. Says the Tories may put in FOI requests on the issue. Brown's just denying all. "We've decided to cut VAT," he says. Not sure whether Cameron's attacks are quite hitting home yet.
1210: Better from Cameron now. He's pushing the debt issue, referring to a "blackhole in the public finances".
1211: Cameron: "There is nothing stimulating about what the Prime Minister is proposing."
1212: Cameron brings up the £1 trillion debt figure.
1213: Brown responds with comparisons to the debt-GDP ratios of other country. Pity those other countries don't have the same off-balance sheet debt that the UK has.
1213: Brown's quite punchy here, if condescending: "I'm sorry I have to give him an economic lesson every week". He keeps pushing the idea that the Tories would do nothing; quotes Andrew Lansley writing on the Tory blog that "this recession can be good for us".
1214: Good line from Cameron. "This Prime Minister has given us the debt levels of Italy and the accounting practices of Enron".
1216: Brown's reducing this into a slanging match, in the worst possible sense. Constantly calling the Tories "the do-nothing party"; not asnwering the questions etc. Not pretty, but this could be the stuff that gets the news coverage later.
1218: Clegg leads on "fairness" in the PBR. Returns to the issue of tax cuts for low-income earners. I always think this is a fairly fruitful attack, particularly after the 10p tax debacle.
1220: Brown insists that the VAT cut will benefit low-income earners, and repeats the "Lib Dem cuts" line. "We are the party of fairness. A party calling for £20 billion of cuts in services is not a party of fairness." Shameless.
1222: And planted question of the day goes to ... Ian Davidson. He asks Brown whether he agrees that "the spoiled toffs [i.e. the Tories] just don't get it." Then follows it up by asking how Brown's working with the international community. Also shameless.
1223: Brown says the G20 meeting in London will take place on 2 April.
1224: Brooks Newmark asks Brown if he can name one of the three countries with a higher deficit that the UK. Brown repsonds: "America".
1226: Questions on council tax and defence spending.
1229: Simon Burns asks why, if the financial problems started in America, does Brown still retain Alan Greenspan as an adviser.
1231: Douglas Carswell: "The PM didn't give us a straight answer before. Can he confirm that national debt till top £1 trillion." Brown uses is as an opportunity to dish out the "Do-nothing party with a do-nothing leader" line. He seems to have shifted away from the "PR Man" attack on Cameron, on to this "do-nothing" theme.
1232: More from Brown on what he calls the "do nothing" theme. He tries to again quote Andrew Lansley, and is stopped by the Speaker.
1233: That's it.
VERDICT: A strange PMQs. Cameron and Clegg launched the right attacks, but Brown was able to fend them all off with sheer bluster. "We've set out the figures in the PBR," "We've cut VAT," and "We're the party of fairness," were his stock responses to questions on national debt, tax and low-income earners, respectively. It was disingenuous, but it may just have got him through what could have been a tricky PMQs.
Previous
Tina
November 26th, 2008 12:28pm Report this commentIf Cameron wants his questions answered, he has to ask something that is a genuine debating point.
I normally have some sympathy with the view that Brown doesnt answer questions.
But just asking Brown to repeat certain facts - e.g. will he admit that debt has doubled - is not ever going to get the response "yes i admit that debt has doubled" and nor should it.
TrevorsDen
November 26th, 2008 1:02pm Report this comment"Brown was able to fend them all off with sheer bluster" --- this is why PMQs are pointless.
There is in fact no requirement to answer questions just spout propaganda.
Browns claim of 'do nothing' for instance is just plain lies. The facts the evidence is plain to the contrary. But since this is not a debate in any real sense then to get embroiled in that is a waste of time.
Thats why, 'Tina', oppositions end up asking the questions they do.
I suppose one question to ask is just what did labour 'do' to get us in to this mess - and Brown would just blame somebody else.
So you see its all quite pointless.
The real issue is - just when will the real world intrude into labours fantasies? Some of it will over the next 12 months in rising unemployment. But the rest labour seem increasingly inrtent on pursuing a King Canute like policy of thinking they can by sheer command and regulation (maybe 'bluster' even) turn back the waves of economic reality.
No doubt they hope to do this until the next election. May be they dream of being able to do this after as well. But ultimately it is reality that will undo them.
Not 6 questions a week.
BrianSJ
November 26th, 2008 1:22pm Report this commentAgree with your verdict and the use of the word shameless. Cameron has to stop being straight and reasonable if he is to get through. Might be a price worth paying.
Dean
November 26th, 2008 1:50pm Report this commentNot a strange outcome at all. What we're actually witnessing, all over the world, is the total collapse of a failed ideology - market fundamentalism - and the political consequences of this when some politicians (like Obama) grasp that the world has changed and others (like McCain, Cameron and Osborne) don't.
Cameron's line of attack isn't effective because it's based on a flawed assumption that a traditional Thatcherite critique of tax-and-spend Labour government is a credible stance in the midst of a global deflationary slump caused by de-regulated markets. It won't - period. The sooner he and Osborne understand this, the better.
This is not to defend Brown - he deserves all the criticism he is getting - but unlike Cameron he seems to understand the wider historical drama.
No doubt Cameron expects to be vindicated in due course, in which case I admire his nerve, but the short term price is the potential loss of support from floating voters who voted Labour in 2005, had switched to the Tories by mid-2008, but who now may be having second thoughts. Cameron needs to revive his modernisation project fast. He needs to hold the centre, not shift to the right.
Ian C
November 26th, 2008 2:34pm Report this commentDean, if you had been awake for the past decade you would realise that the problem has been creating perverse incentives in POORLY over-regulated markets, through governments targeting inflation of everything ecxept asset prices. In English, that means House prices. Brown is more guilty of this than anyone, including GW Bush.
Chris
November 26th, 2008 2:38pm Report this commentMarkets, Dean, are not an ideology. They are a fact. The question is, how can they be made to work most effectively - that is, what kind of regulation is needed and how much of it? It was not de-regulated markets that caused the problem - that's the lefty lie that you seem to have swallowed. It was lefty over-regulation of markets to achieve social(ist) engineering.
Andrew Forbes
November 26th, 2008 3:22pm Report this commentBrown has figured out that actually answering the question is awkward at best and potentially disastrous. He also knows that while the Tories can ask about 5 questions, he gets about 10 chances to chant his slogans back. His responses are framed to be the soundbite shown on the news. If he gives the same slogan in answer to every question, he can guarantee that slogan will be on the news.
Cameron, likewise, knows he's not going to get an answer to his questions, so, in turn, his questions have become his own slogans that he'd like to see on the news.
It's all desperately unenlightening, and possibly should be stopped. The rot started when New Labour cunningly split the single hour-long session into 2 1/2-hour session. Any fool can bat answers back for a 1/2-hour, but it took rather more skill to weather the full hour, if the subject matter was raw, and the questioning intelligent. We only ever get unsatisfactory disputed points victories these days, whereas knock-outs were more common before.
toni
November 26th, 2008 5:00pm Report this commentAndrew Forbes is wrong.
It used to be a fifteen minute session each Tuesday and Thursday, before it was changed to a half hour each Wednesday.
Oscar
November 26th, 2008 5:19pm Report this commentAndrew - I agree with you -but didn't Tony Blair change PMQs from twice a week for 15 minutes to once a week for half an hour?
Apart from that quibble, the "do nothing" soundbite is shockingly vacuous. (Shouldn't Cameron have countered that Brown is the "say nothing" PM?). The country is drowning in debt but the hacks still seem hooked on making news out of meaningless verbal stunts. Surely reporting the true state of the economy should be given priority - or does the senseless battle of the soundbite win?
RH
November 26th, 2008 5:28pm Report this commentDean, what are you on and where can you buy it? Time will tell who is right on this, but history should tell us that the chances it is Brown are miniscule. Brown thinks he can turn back the clock re-inflate the bubble and things will just carry on the way he hoped they would the first time round. They won't, and it will be this Government that finds itself on the wrong side of history.
Thank goodness Cameron has at last shown some nerve, the last eleven years have seen a truly destructive consensus by our rulers that the bubble would last forever when a child could have seen it couldn't. Time for the grown ups to take responsibility and not gutlessly pass the problem to the next generation(or two).
Gordon Out
November 26th, 2008 5:50pm Report this commentHow about a meaningful soundbite for Cameron: "Labour - mortgaging our children's future".
Athesius the Facilitator
November 26th, 2008 6:46pm Report this commentAnybody with half a brain knows that Cameron is right, however he is going about it the wrong way. I said last week that Brown is to partisan and even in the face of the country's problems he still puts the Labour party first. Cameron should use this partisanship against the PM and it will wound deeply. If Brown wants the population to believe that Cameron is the "do nothing leader of a do nothing party" then Cameron must surely want the population to believe that Brown is the "self centered leader of a self centered party" or words to that effect.
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