True romance
Lloyd Evans 3:08pm
‘Any closer and they’ll start kissing,’ said Cameron. The PM and his beloved chancellor were seated side by side at PMQs today, chatting showily throughout. Their rhubarb-rhubarb conversation was intended to quell the rumours of civil war in Downing Street. The ploy misfired. Two men conversing don’t both speak at each other simultaneously. But that scarcely mattered. The session was the rowdiest and least illuminating of the year so far. At times it was noisier than the Pamplona bull-run.
Cameron began by trying to elicit answers about the appalling mortality rates at Staffordshire Hospital. Brown adopted his cenotaph grimace and reeled off a list of inquiries, investigations and disciplinary sanctions which parked the issue in neutral territory. Then Cameron turned to the happier ground of the cabinet blood-bath. He asked Brown to repeat this statement before the house. ‘I would never instruct anybody to do anything other than support my chancellor’.
Howls and jeers erupted on all sides as Brown, predictably enough, protested that Cameron had raised the issue of personality because he couldn’t make up his mind about policy. Cameron tried again to shame Brown into admitting complicity in the Darling smears. Again Brown refused and Cameron got so heated that he pitched forward like a tree in a gale and blurted out the unparliamentary word ‘you’ twice. By now members were getting so over-wrought that the Speaker decided to shock them into silence by making a joke. ‘Any noisier and I’ll have to call a helpline,’ he said.
Brown then tried to drag George Osborne into view and give him a light duffing-up. ‘I’d rather be defending my chancellor,’ he shouted at Cameron, ‘than be in his position defending his.’ Cameron replied that if Darling had been right, ‘why was he trying to get rid of him?’ He ended with the best question of the debate. How come per capita GDP is now lower than in 1997? The PM is good with statistics, as we all know. Numbers are putty in his hands and he duly bent this one out of shape and asserted that the opposite is the case. Per capita GDP is higher than it ever has been. This seemed to demonstrate to him, if to nobody else, that he is a genius.
Nick Clegg stood up with an air of petty-fogging impatience. He sounded like the secretary of the Bridge Club breaking the bad news that the chairman hasn’t paid his subs for six weeks. The PM, he said, claims the badge of ‘fairness’ whilst presiding over a tax system that favours the rich over the poor. Brown responded with avuncular condescension. ‘I hoped he’d do better than that.’ He then reminded everyone that six million UK citizens waste hours of their time filling in his tax credit application forms.
Then he decided to change the subject by deploying the brilliant, but little known, ‘Lichtenstein manouevre’. Very soon, he told us, a whopping one billion pounds will be recovered from the Alpine tax-haven thanks to an agreement signed by the chancellor. This cunning tactic works in two ways. It impresses the house. And it’s impossible to verify. Statistics prove that by the time the average researcher has found Lichtenstein on the map he’s forgotten why he was looking for it.
The backbench plants revealed few roses today. Stephen Pound made an elegant and witty dig at Cameron. He urged the PM to introduce ‘a Robin Hood tax’ and added archly, ‘we in this house know who speaks for the Sheriff of Nottingham.’
All in all, this was a shambolic and predictable PMQs. Cameron was hampered, paradoxically, by the government’s disarray. Chaos in Downing Street raises expectations and the Tory faithful must have tuned in at noon hoping they were about to see Labour’s routed armies being finished off once and for all. Cameron did well enough but he doesn’t yet carry the air of a conquering general.
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luke
February 24th, 2010 3:21pm Report this commentHave to say lloyd i think you capture this really well.
Cameron probably won the debate today but lost the expectations battle badly. A foretaste of the debates? Perhaps..
JP
February 24th, 2010 3:22pm Report this commentPlease, please, please Gordon Brown call an election so we can get rid of you and your tired bunch of bully boys
Victor Southern
February 24th, 2010 3:22pm Report this commentBrown's comment that the Tories, at any stage, were opposed to cutting the deficit shows a alarming loss of grip on reality or else a total disregard for truth. Take your pick.
In2minds
February 24th, 2010 3:24pm Report this commentPMQs, any chance of this being part of the cuts?
Pete
February 24th, 2010 3:29pm Report this commentIf Nick Clegg was right in his assertions, then the answer to Steven Pound's question is that it appears the Sheriff of Nottingham is Gordon Brown (or perhaps Brown is King John and Darling is the Sheriff).
Sunil Prasannan
February 24th, 2010 3:38pm Report this commentLloyd, tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of David Cameron's son, Ivan. Might have affected his performance?
jon dee
February 24th, 2010 3:51pm Report this commentBrown's little-boy look says,"be my friend and I'll be yours,please."
Nick
February 24th, 2010 3:53pm Report this commentYou have got completely muddled over the GDP per capita question.
Cameron asked Brown to explain why, for th eirst time ever in 40 years, GDP per capita had actually fallen "in this Parliament".
This Parliament started in May 2005.
Brown answered with a reference to GDP per capita having risen since 1997. ie over the last three Parliaments.
This wasn't what Cameron was referring to.
A Williams
February 24th, 2010 3:59pm Report this commentThe main advantage Brown has at PMQs is that the man has no shame, none at all, he will happly claim up is down, positve is negative, red is black and bullying is just being passionate, and since he gets the last word at PMQs no one can pull him up over it. And if all else fails he is shameless enough to ignore the question asked and just attack the opposition, carrying out petty electioneering rather than answering questions. PMQ should be abolished or totatlly remade.
Marcher Baron
February 24th, 2010 4:06pm Report this commentSurely Brown is the Sheriff of Nottingham - after all, he doubled the tax on the low paid so he could shave 2p of the tax of those earning £18.5k+, he's robbed pensions and he's consistently failed to raise the tax threshold in line with inflation during his time as Chancellor. Since Brown hasn't provided a past fair for all, I have absolutely no confidence in his providing a future one!
mitcheltj
February 24th, 2010 4:11pm Report this commentWhat a shower they all are. No wonder politicians are held in such low regard. No wonder the country is in such a mess. A plague on all their houses.
charles hercock
February 24th, 2010 4:27pm Report this commentWe do not actually want a conquring bullying General,We need a competent charismatic savior.Come May we will get one.We will win
London Calling
February 24th, 2010 4:35pm Report this commentPMQ…Melodramatic Parliamentary Quiescent, sums it up in one
Chuck Unsworth
February 24th, 2010 5:22pm Report this commentNick is absolutely right. Once again Brown avoids answering the question by answering one which has not been posed. Cameron's visible annoyance at Brown's evasion was plain to see.
Thomas Cussans
February 24th, 2010 6:30pm Report this commentIt was striking today that McNutter, on the backfoot well before PMQs began, instantly then deployed every shameless tool at his disposal.
Anyone surprised? Well, yes. A tiny bit.
We all know that lying is his default position. But even I was left stunned by Brown's instinctive, hectoring dishonesty today.
The man is plainly much more than merely demented.
No one can inhabit a world in which lying is taken as read without going mad themselves.
And so he has.
Straitjacket anyone?
Boudicca
February 24th, 2010 6:32pm Report this commentI suspect Cameron was navigating a bit of a tightrope - hitting Brown with jibes about bullying and hell, without appearing a bully himself. I think he got the balance right.
The remark about Brown and Darling being close enough to kiss was wonderful - and even better when Brown promptly pursed his lips into his camp pout. Wonderful.
John Bracewell
February 24th, 2010 6:42pm Report this commentThe Press in general and of course the BBC are reporting that there has always been tension between the PM and the Chancellor. Correct.
But the point is and is being obscured by comparisons to other PM/Chancellors, that as far as I have heard Darling is the first Chancellor to be briefed against in the press by his own PM in order to pave the way to sack him. It is that behaviour which is unique, unusual and symptomatic of the abrasive culture in No 10 currently.
Casual Observer
February 24th, 2010 7:17pm Report this commentThe trouble is, there's more bullshit in Westminster than ever there was in Pamplona.
Robert Williams
February 24th, 2010 7:55pm Report this commentGary Gibbon on channel 4 News read this quote from someone inside No10 (of Brown)"He has insufficient human empathy to be a bully"
Victor Southern
February 24th, 2010 10:20pm Report this commentWell the 1 billion pounds which may or may not be "recovered" from Lichtenstein will cover our borrowing for almost 2 days so let's hope it arrives by Friday.
2trueblue
February 25th, 2010 1:45am Report this commentWhat is it with the media that they wish to ameliorate every defect of Browns? Is it that he has destroyed more reputations than anyone? Name one person that has defied this government and has not had their reputation blackened.
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