Crude but shrewd
Lloyd Evans 3:52pm
Gordon spent Christmas learning the catechism from Peter Mandelson. Today we heard the result. And it sounded robotic. ‘Do nothing’ is his clockwork description of the Tories. ‘Real help’ is the mantra for Labour. The first question at PMQs came from a government stooge asking about loan guarantees. Gordon stood up and re-announced his scheme to underwrite £10 billion worth of business debts. ‘Real help’ he said. Again and again. I lost count after the fifth repetition.
Cameron responded by departing from his script. ‘Planted question, copied policy.’ This was his best moment. A powerful point succinctly made and he seemed justifiably pleased that the government has adopted a measure he’s been urging on them since well before Christmas. He then reverted to his prepared battleground - the 2.5 percent VAT cut. This probably sounded good in the war-room but it went off like a wet firework in the house. Calling the cut ‘an expensive failure’ he suggested that it had added £12 billion to government debt. In normal times £12 billion would be a vast sum to squander but when rescue packages of several hundred billions are regularly being announced both here and in America it sounds like a mislaid thumb-tack. Gordon ignored it and claimed that the reduction had added £275 to the average family’s yearly budget.
It’s a pity MPs don’t go shopping. They might realise that the cut hasn’t reached customers because it’s too fiddly to pass on. Things that cost £4.99 should be reduced by 13p but when did you last see a £4.99 item repriced at £4.86? Nick Clegg joined the assault on Gordon’s crisis management. ‘Here’s what he should do,’ he said primly. ‘Stop telling the banks to both hoard cash and lend it out. And use one of the part-nationalised banks as a state bank.’ Gordon gave him a kind smile. ‘I admire his certainty.’
Asked about the President-elect, Gordon offered us a sneak preview of his strategy for the spring. ‘The actions of the Obama administration will be complemented by what we can do in Europe. The consensus will be that we need the fiscal stimulus, which,’ he added pointedly, ‘all sides of this house cannot support.’ So that’s the plan. Chum up with other world leaders and stride around the chancelleries of Europe attending summits and looking terribly busy and important. When he gets a free moment he’ll remind us that the ‘marginalised’ Tories have proposed an ‘unfunded’ rescue package and continue to ‘do nothing.’ Crude but shrewd, this tactic has an inbuilt failsafe mechanism. If the world economy picks up Gordon takes the credit. If the world economy falters the world economy takes the blame.
The Tories are letting him get away with it. By the session’s close he was in full swagger-mode, reacting to things he had pretended to hear across the house. ‘They laugh when I mention the car industry.’ He even ventured a low-key tribute to George Bush, ‘the first to recognise the threat of terrorism’ on Sept 11th. He felt confident enough to talk of the ‘philosophical differences’ between Labour and Tory policy without being heckled. Then he turned into the Good Samaritan. ‘We won’t walk by on the other side!’ he announced at top volume. At least one detail of his rhetoric is correct. The Tories do seem marginalised. Not one of them could stop the Prime Minister from parading around as if he were addressing a Socialist rally or a Salvation Army prayer-meeting. Surrounded by his cowed and bemused colleagues, David Cameron looked very cross indeed. As well he might be. With himself.
Previous
M Jones
January 14th, 2009 4:17pm Report this commentCameron's first jibe may have been his best, but to make it before expressing his condolences on more military deaths was shameful and shows just how hollow this weekly ritual has become.
Martin Griffin
January 14th, 2009 4:17pm Report this commentI visited 7 shops recently in the local town and only 2 of them had put their prices down by the VAT reduction. More worryingly one of these shops [a well known coffee house] gave me a VAT receipt showing the sale price as it has been for years but with VAT at 15%. I concluded that there must be a high probability that at the end of the reduction period they would adjust VAT to 17.5% and the total price would then go up!
Slim Jim
January 14th, 2009 4:18pm Report this commentThey say politics is showbiz for the ugly. Well, PMQs is sheer pantomime. The Great Dame very rarely answers a straight question, so I don't think it would matter a jot if the young Cameron's questions were bang on the money - Brown would completely dodge it viz. his answers to the VAT and economic forecast questions. Perhaps if DC picked up the mace and smashed it round the Traitor's chops, that would be a better plan to stop him 'parading around'. Oh yes it would!
CG
January 14th, 2009 4:28pm Report this commentSurely the structured format of PMQ's, with the limit placed on the number of questions the leader of the opposition can ask and the fact that the session is run by the (Labour) Speaker, prevents the Tories from rebutting the PM when he gets into strutting, self-satisfied mode.
That being the case I think its hardly fair to blame shift in fortune during PMQ's entirely on the HM Opposition
Chuck Unsworth
January 14th, 2009 4:34pm Report this commentIt's a pity your columnist doesn't do arithmetic. Brown claimed that reduction in VAT was £5 per week - and then calculated it to be £275 per annum. Of course Brown seems to believe that VAT is payable on everything.
Typical NuLab creative accounting.
Oor Willie
January 14th, 2009 4:49pm Report this commentPMQs need to be restructured. What presumably started out as a means to question the PM of the day on policy issues has degenerated into a pantomime. Planted questions to allow the PM to make outrageous claims about Opposition policy without any chance to reply (and of no relevance to the planted question).
Farce!
Tiberius
January 14th, 2009 5:23pm Report this commentCrude but shrewd indeed.
In terms of putting off the day of reckoning you could say it equates to sending the Jugend to meet the Red Army.
teledu
January 14th, 2009 5:25pm Report this commentOne thing that really gets up my swede (and Brown isn't alone in this), is when ministers say some scheme or other will be "government" funded. Brown said this about some big spending plan in PMQ today.
It should be pointed out that all these schemes/plans/bail-outs etc. are TAXPAYER funded NOT Government funded.
Government funded my ars@.
strapworld
January 14th, 2009 5:30pm Report this commentI believe we will have a BACK ME OR SACK ME election very very soon!
Oscar
January 14th, 2009 5:41pm Report this commentYou saw a different PMQs to me LLoyd - on the box it looked like a clear win for Cameron. Not that most people will know anyway - the media aren't reporting it.
Daniel
January 14th, 2009 5:53pm Report this commentThe Tories should concentrate on getting their policies and strategy right, then the knockabout of PMQs will take care of itself.
Sooner or later, the Tories will be forced to eat humble pie and accept that their orthodox Thatcherite economic policies are very ill-suited to what is probably the worst global crisis the free market economic system has ever confronted.
Sooner or later, they will be forced to accept the need for a fiscal stimulus to counteract the massive de-leveraging of private sector debt which is dragging the world economy into a slump. They won't have any choice, because the alternative - a massive self-reinforcing debt deflation - is simply too horrible to contemplate.
I suspect Gordon Brown knows this, which is why the Tories' current line of attack on him is not proving very effective. Brown is not betting on an early economic recovery; he's betting that there will come an "I told you so" moment when the Tories are forced to abandon their commitment to fiscal rectitude and accept what the Government, the Fed and the IMF have been saying all along, namely that the situation is far worse than the cyclical recessions we have seen in the past, and that consequently usual fiscal rules need to be suspended.
It's a mystery to me why Cameron and Osborne don't get this. They need to pay far more attention to the international dimension of the crisis, and stop trying to persuade people that it's a home grown affair when it patently isn't.
Robert Williams
January 14th, 2009 5:57pm Report this commentPerhaps CG, but shouldn't Conservatives who are called to ask a question at least have put some thought into the matter (especially given the frequent use of "Brownies")? Michael Spicer used his opportunity to ask directly if Brown was going to call an election. That really put Brown on the ropes, he got a one word answer.
Andy
January 14th, 2009 6:12pm Report this comment"Gordon ... claimed that the reduction had added £275 to the average family’s yearly budget" He should get out of la-la land more! We've saved precisely 37 PENCE since the VAT dropped! Most of what we buy isn't VAT-able.
Athesius the Facilitator
January 14th, 2009 8:04pm Report this commentDaniel, I think you are wrong. The Tory's want fiscal stimulus but they want it done properly. And they also want to keep the spending within reason. I think that's the correct attitude and anybody thinking otherwise is a complete dunce.
seb
January 14th, 2009 8:34pm Report this commentDaniel
One of today's papers ran a story saying that local councils are going to cut staff and spending. There is a story, too, that the Irish PM, Cowen, is talking about big cuts in the ROI budget. One national and one international story pointing to the same bigger story - 'There Will Be Cuts', only, of course, without Daniel Day Lewis.
Giving the Fiscal Stimulus [i.e.complete fiscal and budgetary lunacy] a chance to get us through the recession is what is called a 'one-off'. When or if it doesn't work, a large number of treasuries are going to be what economists call 'skint'. Skintness will of course lead to cuts.
It's of course true that the IMF, the US Federal Reserve and Winston Brown might be right. I don't think there's much faith in the fiscal stimulus idea, merely a lot of straw-clutching from a lot of men who've hunkered down and are, at the moment, kissing their backsides one final goodbye before the strange cloud appears on the horizon.
NorthernJohn
January 15th, 2009 10:20am Report this commentAgain, can we get some arithmetic here please. The VAT cut doesn't reduce prices by 2.5% - it saves people 2.5p for every 117.5p (2.13%).
So an item that used to cost £4.99 should be reduced by 10.62p, not by 13p. This article overstates the magnitude of the price cut by 22%.
Ian C
January 15th, 2009 10:40am Report this commentStrapworld,
to have a prayer (remember the gap is wideneing again) Brown must call the election before the budget. Once his numbers from early December are demonstrated as fantasy forecasting and judgment he will cling to the knocker on the door of No 10 until June of next year by the cuticles of his finger nails.
Darling was sitting there yesterday showing no sort of enthusiasm for GB and his repeats.
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