Parallel universe
Lloyd Evans 6:02pm
Armistice Day suits Brown down to the ground. When everyone is obliged wear funeral-director garb, his grey hair and sombre jowls fit the mood perfectly while Dave’s polished and youthful glow looks a trifle out of place. Gordon performed confidently at PMQs today. So did Dave, as it happens, but the skirmish came to nothing because neither was prepared to fight on the ground chosen by the other.
Dave led on the youth unemployment figures. He wanted Brown to admit that his promise ‘to abolish youth unemployment’ had failed. Brown ignored this and took comfort from the thought that without Labour’s policies even more youngsters would be out of work. Dave went into sci-fi mode and told the PM he was ‘living in a parallel universe.’
He reminded Brown that our youth unemployment is far worse than Germany’s or France’s. Ah, yes, said the PM, but it’s not nearly as bad as Ireland’s. This got us nowhere. But the Labour benches were enjoying it, particularly when Brown announced that 250,000 of newly unemployed youngsters were ‘full-time students looking for part-time work.’ That peculiar statistic took Dave by surprise. (And it may bear further investigation.)
In reply, Dave rattled off a list of recession-busting Labour policies that have come to nothing. The ‘asset backed securities guarantee’ has been virtually unused, he said, and ‘the mortgage rescue scheme has helped just 16 families.’ The PM swatted that aside, almost elegantly, by stating that the scheme was only an emergency measure. It hadn’t been used because of his magnificent stewardship of the economy had rendered it unnecessary.
For a moment, Brown seemed to have the upper hand and the Speaker twice had to tell the jeering Labour backbenchers to button it. The encounter expired with Dave asking to Gordon to admit he’s planning ‘cuts not investment’, while Gordon replied in hooligan fashion. ‘Wrong on this, wrong on that’ he yelled and attached a list of policies the Tories have been associated with.
This was a noisy and perfectly unenlightening draw. Nick Clegg stood up and flickered briefly. Changes to housing allowance rules will cut the incomes of 300,000 impoverished tenants, he told us. He seemed convinced he had a poisonous new fiscal muddle on his hands. Brown played it predictably. ‘This government has done more than any other to take people out of poverty,’ he waffled. Then he used his other favourite stat-tactic – questioning the figures. Clegg bounced back up, hopping mad. ‘These are his own figures!’ he shrieked. ‘It took him months to do the right thing on the 10p tax rate.’ And he urged the PM to prevent the changes from being implemented. Brown’s put-down killed the question off. ‘These are proposals for consultation and no decision has been made.’ That shut Clegg up all right. But why didn’t Brown mention it straight away? The issue may return next week.
The best backbench contribution came from Gerald Howarth, the member for Aldershot. He’d recently spoken to one of the servicemen killed last week. He read out an email from a comrade of the fallen man who brought heartening news from the front. ‘We are winning in the job we are doing out here.’ Howarth urged the Prime Minister to work harder at communicating this positive message. Unfortunately the PM took this as a cue to repeat his personal feelings, his pride, his admiration for the soldiers’ courage and so on. That’s not quite it. We’ve had enough of the Gordon’s inner thoughts lately. Instead we want some strategic clarity, we want to hear what progress is being made and if there are victories being won we want them celebrated. Loudly.
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ron
November 11th, 2009 6:50pm Report this commentThere wasn't a single mention of PMQs today on BBC news at six, which I can never recall ever happening before.
Why? Have the media decided to warm to Brown? Is Mandelson's and Campbell's constant digging at the BBC beginning to bear fruit?
The public have despised Brown ever since he became PM, more or less, and all of a sudden he is a pitiful victim of the nasty old Sun.
If the public are that superficial, then a Tory majority is looking rather improbable.
Senor Frizby
November 11th, 2009 7:04pm Report this commentI didn't think the Labour benches enjoyed much today. They looked petrified to me; like gargoyles caught in the gaze of Medusa. Their Medusa being the reality that until we have a GE this is all a sideshow - a grueling charade.
Robert Williams
November 11th, 2009 7:09pm Report this commentThe 10p affair is so strange. It was a simple enough matter for the low paid to immediately understand how they had been stiffed, yet that complicated that it took Brown many months to accept the effects. And still so complicated that Clegg doesn't appreciate that the low paid losers have never been fully compensated for the doubling their tax rate.
TrevorsDen
November 11th, 2009 7:14pm Report this commentAfghanistan is going to continue to cast a pall over PMQs - because the dead will keep coming. The only way the dying will stop is if we stop campaigning.
Labour have failed to prepare the nation for this and as its we the public the Taliban are really targeting with their bombs its a serious dereliction.
Dennis Churchill
November 11th, 2009 7:31pm Report this commentNo questions about Neather’s revelations or the decision to nod through immigrants without checks?
Now that we have such high unemployment does the government still intend to import future voters to go straight on to the dole or displace people already here?
Koakona
November 11th, 2009 8:28pm Report this commentThe truth of employment is that no or low skill employment will increasingly dissipate out of the British economy (unless serving a physical client ie tourism/retail), I can testify to this process as I have spent the majority of the last 4 years supporting the offshoring of this work.
To make a lot of the products, especially service products, affordable to the mass of people costs must be cut, to do this non UK based labor is required thus balancing the lower income with the lower outgoings. The end point of this process however is an ever faster race to the bottom of the pile as more people rely on the bulk "low value" service of suppliers thus shipping more low wage jobs abroad deflating the working wages ever further within the UK.
The solution is not necessarily more University places or more time in College, especially whilst these institutions are providing substandard educations in subjects which are only relevant to those who inform public opinion or pursue the academic route to its fullest. What we need is a realignment of the education system to generate more skilled laborers, more engineers, more scientists and more mathematicians. Simply whilst the world services our needs we must lead the worlds development or we consign ourselves to an ever lower living standard. Until a politician stands up in the HoC and displays this simple wisdom we are fighting a losing battle against becoming a third world county (Neathergate aside).
Stop teaching sociology, English Literature and Media Studies and start demanding a higher grade of pupil year on year not a lower one as now in the core subjects of Maths and Science and we will see the benefits of our efforts for decades beyond.
Dennis Churchill
November 11th, 2009 9:58pm Report this commentKoakona
One serious problem is that education is controlled by the supplier so educationalists decide course content. As they also rarely have experience outside the education system they are unlikely to understand the needs of the economy.
They also often give the impression that even talking about the “needs of the economy” is rather vulgar, education being about higher things.
2trueblue
November 11th, 2009 10:23pm Report this commentRon, the BBC stands for Brown Broadcasting Corporation that why we have a dumbed down electorate and no real impartial news. Mandy and Campbell are a great pair and have another agenda, wait and see. They have managed to make a virute out of incompetence at every turn. Let us hope that the electorate can remember that Labour did not remember to give us our referendum on the EU but Brown did sign for us, and that Labour thought that our culture needed diluting to the point of extinction.
Brown failed, as usual, to answer any direct questions. He is in denial about youth unemployment and its effects in the long term. They are the backbone of our future and like everything Brown has thrown them on the scrapheap and taken the easy option to either import solutions or export jobs. Nothing is well thought out, e.g the car scrappage scheme; who has benefited? All the foreign car makers. Truthfully you couldn't make it up, could you?
J R Hartley
November 11th, 2009 11:03pm Report this commentI beg to differ Lloyd but I thought Brown came across as almost detatched from reality. These sombre affairs weight heavily on adversarial exchanges but I thought Dave skewered him on another one of his previous idle boasts (abolishing youth unemployment) and Brown resorted to his angry finger-jabbing at the lectern. The leaks of Brown's impending cuts again undercut any rational belief in Brown's words.
He gets away without answering the questions but his performances repeatedly defy reality...
Cuffleyburgers
November 12th, 2009 7:35am Report this commentPointless charade.
Cameron asks a series of questions designed to make the PM look an idiot, and PM uses each one for a randomly chosen list of tractor production statistics.
Until:
a) Cameron starts asking geuinely penetrating questions about the manifold failings of his appalling government, and;
b) The PM is forced by the speaker actually to answer them,
then there is really no point.
This is underlined by the fact that no two commentators ever agree on whether Brown had the upper hand or Cameron.
Total waste of time.
I would much rather see eg. Redwood or Hannan asking the questions. They seem to be two individuals more concerned about genuinely holding Brown to account on facts and details.
Michael Booth
November 12th, 2009 8:37am Report this commentSpeaking of parallel universes... seems like the news that Ministry of Defence civil servants have been getting massive 'performance' incentives at a time when HM Forces are strapped for cash and equipment. Another example of joined-up government? I think not...
Owen Morgan
November 12th, 2009 8:41am Report this commentThe terminally clueless Lloyd Evans sets out his stall with "Armistice Day suits Brown down to the ground".
Really? Didn't you notice which of the dignitaries at the Cenotaph, on Remembrance Sunday, refused to bow his head in honour of the Fallen?
Michael Booth
November 12th, 2009 8:42am Report this commentEducation is not just about preparing people for the job market, nor is it just about the ivory-tower stuff. Education is, and should be, about preparing people for life, and does not stop when you leave school or university. The country needs mathematicians, scientists,mechanics,plumbers, artists, historians, engineers and so on - all have a part to play in a healthy and vibrant society.
simontm
November 12th, 2009 12:06pm Report this commentErm, did he really say 250,000 of youth unemployment were "full-time students looking for part-time jobs"?
Because unless the system has changed since I was a student, you cannot register as unemployed if you are in full-time education.
To be registered unemployed you have to be available for work.
It is one of the reasons NEETS figures are so important
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