Tornado in the chamber

Publius

Mr Evans
It seems from your appraisal that Cameron can't win. If he speaks out forcefully, you worry that he will upset "the neutrals" (and what a delightfully vile phrase that is!), yet if he panders to the neutrals he is accused of being indecisive and wishy-washy and not standing for anything (which is presumably what the neutrals stand for).

Number7

I must have been watching the wrong TV Station at 12.00 today. The Brown I saw was red in the face and shaking.

Surprising for the Speccie - I thought that fictional reporting was the perogative of the tabloid media.

Fragmeister

Lloyd "Where's my Labour peerage?" is back. Where were you last week?

RDC

Ah, the insidious Mr Evans.Your cynicism knows no bounds. All you ever care about is "the game". No iossue of right and wrong ever matters to you. I think, frankly, you write silly reports.

General Zod

Back to your usual rubbish, Lloyd.

Can't you just sod off to the New Statesman?

Andy Cox

I don't agree with that at all. I've tended to vote Lib Dem or Labour over the years but even I was impressed with Cameron today. He was right to be angry and i'm sure his sentiments would have been echoed by a great number of 'neutrals', like myself. I thought that Brown's reprisal of the Ashcroft theme not only appeared tired and irrelevant but was also highly offensive when compared to the serious issues that Cameron was raising.

Also, a bit of spontaneous emotion goes down rather well with normal people, whether it's claims of bullying or genuine anger at the dispatch box.

nash

Was obviously watching PMQs in a parallel universe. Did not recognise what was described in the article - all about paradigms I guess.

Brown is full of sophistry. Defence spending (like health spending) has to rise FASTER than "real terms" in order to "stand still". CPI/RPI goes up 3% - helicopter goes up 15%. What Brown always says is "accurate" (by whatever measure is in his head) BUT WRONG!!

Marbury

His "flexed torso"? Steady on!

Mr. Green

You don't think this was a good PMQs for Dave, eh?

I disagree.

Watchers of PMQs will have their allegiancies pretty firmly in place already; except for some Tory voters who are still not too sure about Dave.

People who are going to vote Labour, even after everything which Bliar and Bruin have done, will vote Labour no matter what Dave says or does at PMQs.

And what about the rest of hte population? Well, they don't watch PMQs and so wont be effected one way or the other.

In short, I feel that Dave showing his teeth will have firmed up some of his wavering Tory supporters.

toco

Lloyd you are a naive and ignorant individual.It seems to me you never left the kindergarten.Please just return from whence you came.

Dorothy Wilson

Sorry Lloyd. DC was absolutely right to lose his temper. Brown may have been accused of being "disingenous" and "dissembling" at the Chilcot enquiry. Another way of putting it is that his evidence was simply untruthful - and that is still erring on the side of politeness.

And for him to try to brush aside the deaths of four unequipped soldiers by regurgiatating Ashcroft was little short of disgraceful.

TomTom

Having learned about Per Cent at Primary School politicians of all shades rush out into the playground hoping to bamboozle grown-ups with their magnificence.....even wearing long trousers they sound like children

Richard

I am afraid to say it but call me Dave is showing signs of cracking up. To be thrown off by a heckler is really bad form. Tony Blair wouldn't have behaved like this and God knows he had enough reasons to over the years. Brown is growing on the general public and Cameron is being exposed. The Kings new clothes perhaps!

Megan

Sometimes, Lloyd Evans, I think you watch PMQs in a parallel universe to the rest of us because your account usually bears no resemblance to the encounter I witness every Wednesday!

Chris lancashire

Not for the first time I have to wonder what you think you were watching.
Brown's repeated use of the Ashcroft gambit backfired - even a former Labour Home secretary branded it "inappropriate".

RDC

Oh, and Harriet Harman has just posted that Cameron's was a "synthetic fury" not real. So, you think he is not fit to be trusted with our nuclear weapons (by the way, this is an unforgivable line by you) because he is out of control and she, sitting opposite him says that. Well, clearly, you are the expert Mr Evans (irony). Actually, he was just pretty cross, and rightly so. Your take is mad.

Dean

It is completely ridiculous for Cameron to try to argue that the Tories won the Cold War. The Cold War was ended by two brave men - Reagan and Gorbachev - and one brave woman, Margaret Thatcher. Of the three, it was Gorbachev who had the most important catalytic role. However, Thatcher deserves enormous credit for putting aside her ideological reservations and recognising early on that Gorbachev was a man she could do business with. I have high hopes that Cameron will prove similarly pragmatic in office, but his comments today were positively delusional.

Publius

More Mandelsonian slickness from Dean, I see.

TrevorsDen

You are a thick pig ignorant toss pot Mr Evans.

You praise Brown for blatantly bringing up Ashcroft (and what pray has Ashcroft done? Pease tell me somebody) when that issue has nothing to do with him when it had nothing to do with the question and when his own party have countless non dom donors.

In short you praise brown for being a lying bastard. Bog off Mr Evans. Cameron was right to lose his temper and right to remind us tbhat the tories won the cold war against the teth of labour opposition.

Cameron was 23 and working for the Conservative Party when the Berlin wall fell - so no surprise that you fail to pick Brown up on another lie.

fr

Does this guy write for the Spectator ? Good grief !

Freddo

So the Tories didn't win the Cold War but Mrs Thatcher did.
Thanks for clearing that up.

John David Barnett

Why this misplaced adulation of Gorbachev?

The fall of Communism was never part of his gameplan.

Gorbachev lost the Cold War when he failed to persuade Reagan to drop SDI.

He was a good man compared to his fellow Communists but no giant.

Vulture

Seems like everyone's out of step except Lloyd and Little Dick ( who's an [ill]paid Liebour flunkey from the bunker anyway).

So that's Evans the tosspot on his usual Brown-nosing job.

As someone who normally has no time for Dave I thought his anger was controlled, cold and justified. And far from hysterical.
Moreover I think it will resonate with people who know that Bruin and Liebour hate the military and its values and have British blood on their dirty hands.

Personally I'd like to parachute those sneering time-servers who throng the Liebour benches into Taliban-controlled territory with no kit and see how they fare.

Bert

Richard

Cameron was not thrown off by a heckler, he was rightly angered by a stupid labour tribalist (probably Skinner)and the refusal of Brown to be non partisan on a matter of defense. Tony Blair would have made a meal of it as well.

If you really think Brown is growing on the general public then you are a hopeless case. The only way he grows is in the manner of a parasite killing its host.

As for Cameron, he only gets exposure via our glorious BBC when the story can be constructed as a negative.

Richard

@Trevorsden
Calm down calm down.....take a pill!
Boy you Tories are loosing it big time.

Remember this is in the bag you can't lose.
Only loonies would vote brown back in....or is you thats on the wrong side.....oh dear make that two pills.

pharbitis

Can someone tell me who Lloyd Evans is and why he is writing in the Speccie and why I should take any notice of what his views are?

Stepney

You're forgetting that the election is decided by people who a) don't give a flying monkeys **** about Ashcroft b) like a bit of passion when those who defend them are themselves attacked.

Wrong Evans. About as wrong as you possibly can be.

William Blakes Ghost

Ah but Mr Evans few of us would trust you with a pen or a keyboard let alone a box of fireworks or most particularly our sons and daughters.

You see it says a lot when someone like yourself so complacently apologises for the lack of integrity of the Prime Minister. Clearly tainted souls like yourself really should not be taken seriously.....

David Ossitt

Richard

“I am afraid to say it but call me Dave is showing signs of cracking up.”

No you are not; afraid that is, that David Cameron, is, to use your words, showing signs of cracking up.

It is your whole reason for being here; to spread your childish comments.

What you; and the rest of your tribe, who post your increasingly foolish diatribes are afraid of is that labour will lose the general election.

Frank P

"Tornado in the chamber?"

Fart in a colander, perhaps.

SallyC

Guys,
Lloyd is the Polly Toynbee of the Speccie. He is supposed to spout rubbish so you come on and call him a wally. It's a marketing ploy. It's ups their hits.

A rather short term one but a ploy nonetheless.

David Lindsay

The Soviet Union collapsed as it was always going to anyway, exactly as predicted by, among others, Enoch Powell. Nothing to do with Reagan. Nothing to do with Thatcher.

Meanwhile, the ties between the Tories and the military top brass cry out for further investigation.

Cuffleyburgers

I'm not sure how the Ashcroft scenario is in any way more represhensible than the rather unpleasant "lord" Paul, who by all accounts ammassed his not inconsiderable fortune in part by ripping off british pensioners - all in a day's work for labour of course.

bola

"Having seen Cameron today I wouldn’t trust him with a box of fireworks let alone the nuclear button......"

How much is Unite paying you Evans?

Peter From Maidstone

You are a thick pig ignorant toss pot Mr Evans.

Have to agree entirely. Why do we have to put up with this? Do the Spectator really think that their readership doesn't matter at all?

Richard

@David Ossitt,

You too?
Blimey if the noble Ossitt is cracking what is going on?
Tonight I hope and pray that ALL of you get a grip.....your boy had a bad day don't worry he will be back
In a straight jacket maybe but he will be back so relax.

Boudicca

Evans - you really take the biscuit. It doesn't matter what Cameron does, or how appalling Brown is does it. You say Cameron was below par and Gordon put on a good performance.

You really are very sad.

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

"The faithful will welcome his flare-up but it could easily alarm neutrals".

Lloyd - I suggest most "neutrals" might see PMQ for what it has become :- a waste of time.
If a simple "flare-up" is welcomed by the faithful, God help them. They're clutching a straws.

The Tories blew it when they fell asleep for 13 years at the wheel while the Luddites were at work. Now they're waking up to the fact they might have overslept.

With weeks to go until the election, it's a bit late to try to muster "fire in the belly". Either it's there or it's not.
Sorry to say - but this really is X-Factor politics.
We vote for the least talentless.
And so it'll be a "close-run thing".

oldtimer

Brown and the Labour party have a grave problem. The public do not believe them on defence spending.

Their "solution" is the Old New Labour smoke and mirrors trick of seeking to change the issue. In this instance I doubt that it will work. In so far as anyone pays attention to PMQs, which is not very many, they are more likely to conclude that Cameron was right to react so strongly. If nothing else, it revealed he has some fire in his belly. This is a necessary condition for someone who wants the PM.

Dean

The aggressive and hysterical tone of many of the comments posted here is ridiculous. Just because someone criticises Cameron for making a foolish remark, it doesn't follow that he/she is a Labour Party supporter or a troll, for God's sake.

I think most of us who contribute to Coffee House want the Tories to win the general election, but our motivations differ. Personally I strongly support the Tories on social policy, defence and law and order, but I have reservations about their economic policies,which seem to me to be somewhat sterile and dogmatic. Voicing such concerns doesn't make me or anyone else a socialist. I support a low tax, free enterprise economy, but I don't want a government that supports whatever outcomes the unfettered free market happens to produce. You can be a Tory and believe in redistribution, the NHS etc.

It should be possible for people on the centre right to debate these issues without resort to name calling, and the fact that so many of the people who contribute here seem intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them is PRECISELY why so many voters remain turned off by the Tory Party.

If you don't believe the Party needed to change, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but there is not a shred of evidence that sticking to a core vote strategy could ever garner the Tories more than about 32% of the popular vote. Relive 2001 and 2005 if you want to; the rest of us want to move on...

Barbara

So, to sum up: "Labour non-dom good, Tory non-dom bad."

Are you by any chance related to towering genius Polly Toynbee?

The Laughing Cavalier

Lord Guthrie sits on the Cross Benches.

Jokermanns

Gordon Brown looked like a fool at PMQs and Mr Evans you look like fool trying to defend him.

Richard

Dave and Georgie will be fuming tonight...now the Tobin tax has been passed by the EU he is sunk.
The people will get their money back and quicker than we thought.
GB said it's not the people who will pay for the bail out it's the banks....oh yes!
America will have to conform and the rest of the world will fall in-line too.
Sam hide the crown derby and send the kids to grannies house now!

Athesius the Facilitator

The cuts in the early 90s WHERE a direct result of the cold war. I was in the Navy at the time and the cuts came hard and fast and painful, but fair. Brown wanted them cuts to be much bigger. Brown is a horrible dissembler of the truth. He is good at it, but do we really want a prime minister to be in office because he is a good dissembler of the truth.

Cameron WON again today simply because Brown will not answer a question. As long as he won't answer questions he will ALWAYS loose.

Richard is Ed (public school boy) Balls. I think he should be getting on with his education brief rather than waisting tax payers money blogging all the time.

Paddy

How very immature Mr. Evans.

PMQ's - Harman and Straw laughing. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Think of the poor mothers of those murdered soldiers. How do you think they feel when they see Brown, Harman and the rest of the front bench laughing. I know what I feel and that's absolute disgust.

David Ossitt

Peter From Maidstone

“Peter it is good to see that you are back, I noticed the other day, but forgot to comment.

I am prompted to now; because you have done that clever trick of posting in bold!

Please will you remind me, how do you do it?

Can you also do colour or underline etcetera?

Victor Southern

We do indeed know who were wearing the CND badges. We also have evidence of a number of Communists and fellow-travellers who are today leading lights of the Labour party. The revered Michael Foot was an admirer of the Soviets. Harold Wilson is rumoured to have had strong contacts with the KGB. Jack Straw was a Communist as was Alan Milburn. There are many more.

The simple reality is that Labour was wrong about the world political structure, about the world economy and they still are to this day. So when Brown ends with "Wrong, wrong, wrong" he is once again turning day into night, truth into lies, honour into sleaze.

Virtually nobody believes that he funded the armed forces properly - he even had Des Browne enter a legal action to reduce the compensation of maimed veterans.

Fragmeister

Just watched PMQs on the Internet. Brown just gave his prepared answers and could have been replaced by a speak your weight machine. Cameron was emotional and quite rightly. If Brown does feel any pain from the deaths of those he (in his Cheshire Cat style) helped send to their deaths, he doesn't show it and it doesn't look as if he means it. He speaks more and more slowly and more and more monotonously as if that shows gravitas and feeling. It doesn't. Cameron is right to be angry because Brown is a coward and a liar. Can you get it right next week Mr Evans?

Edward Sutherland

I have to wonder why I bother reading the Coffee House or,indeed, keeping up my subscription for the hard copy of the Spectator. I thought I was subscribing to a right-of-centre publication that would be relishing the prospect of the removal of one of the worst governments this country has ever known, and would be striving might and main to see it happen. But no, quite a number of Coffee House journalists seem to take a positive delight in rubbishing the prospects of the Conservative government this country desperately needs. Hopefully, if enough of us cancel our subs the penny might drop with the editor and his minions.

Buggles

What a soft shite you must be if you think that's losing it. Calling the CDS's Tories is utterly disgraceful and needed to be called out because it shows what a bunch of Army hating tossers exist in the Labour Party is.

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg got it wrong as usual. Michael Foot - Late yes, lamented no. If he'd got into office he'd have made Brown look competent. When Brown pops his socks I suppose we'll all be told what a great statesman he was too. C'est la guerre.

stephen

Maybe our Dave had read the pretty negative comment in the Standard before he launched off! Anne McElvoy pretty devasting[is the Standard still a Tory paper now its owned by a Ruskie?] The picture of Dave and his Boy George is very unflattering and the caption underneath is worse "Uncertain:David Cameron and George Osborne lack unity of tone on the Economy"
An easy solution sack Boy George and put William Hague or Ken Clarke in his place before it is too late otherwise the Standard's Headline " What if David Cameron does not make it to Downing St?" could become a reality!

Mike Thomas

Brown also lied at the Despatch Box.

Labour cut defence spending in real terms in 2004/5 and 2005/6 by £500m.

I would use the word 'misled' but he is what he is.

I wonder what Mr. Evans would make of that with all his chatterati effete lefty chums.

Simon Denis

I wondered whether this report was accurate and so I watched PMQs just now. Despite my deep opposition to the "modernisers", it is no pleasure to confess that Mr Cameron did not today get the better of Brown. Whatever the weather, I want the Tories to win. True, Mr Evans rather exaggerates the anger but the general tenor of his account is accurate. I think Cameron's mistake was to allow his rage to take over. Rage differs from the sort of magisterial wrath which moves the crowd. It is close to exasperation, to weakness and finally to tears. To be angered in this way is to be wounded and Mr Cameron showed it. Perhaps the recent Labour resurgence has shocked him. It has surprised and distressed us all, but the first thing to do is to recognise the symptoms of panic and then to suppress them. He needs to be emotionally more restrained and verbally more daring - he should tell Brown to his face that thanks to his incompetence he has blood on his hands, young blood, British blood, the blood of the brave who are dying under the political leadership of a notorious bully and coward. No thumping tome of statistics can lever from Brown's conscience the weight of his guilt. This would grab headlines, wound Labour, wound Brown, render the stats duly meaningless and drive the slab faced goon into one of his notorious fits of rage. The words should be delivered in the manner of an emotional judge passing sentence on a particularly heinous crime. How is it that the tricks of oratory are so unknown to members of parliament?

Peter From Maidstone

Hi David, I've still been reading CH but found the Spectator coverage generally too depressing to even comment on.

To do bold you surround the text with the following tags (I am adding spaces so they appear) < b > Words go here < / b >

You can do italics with < i > < / i >

You can do colours with < font colour = "red" > Words go here < / font >

You can do underline with < u > Words go here < / u >

And you can combine them all by having, for example..

< b >< i > Italic and Bold text < / i >< / b >

Hope this helps

Barbara

I watched today's PM Q/time and to me they all were like a bunch of children, shouting, passing rude remarks, laughing at silly things, is this what we pay them for, while the country sinks into the mire further, the debt rises by the minute. God give me strength! D Cameron did try to put on a show I'll give him that, but he lost his rack that's for sure, and that's a mistake with Stalinist Brown for he rode in with all his Socialist arrows, DC was wide open. Not a good performance from any of them which brings us to the election, do we want more of the same or should we vote for the new, makes one think? I'm for the party that will commit to getting us out of the EUSSR, to date the three in parliament fail hands down.

Alan Douglas

To Dean,

While you and I may not agree, I reckon we could hold a proper conversation and respect each other afterwards. But when someone as moronically perverse as "Richard" comes on and in his niggling way states boldly, and always, that black is white, that DC lost PMQs to GB 10 - 1, then yes, I will be rude to him, if I can be bothered to reply at all.

It is not the newness that is objected to, or even his disagreeing, but the blind spin which is his ONLY point.

Alan Douglas

Major Plonquer

OK So Dave has a hysterical side? But he's so much more 'today' than Brown. When he's in Number 10 he'll be throwing iPhones and not Nokias at his employees.

Nicholas

Edward Sutherland - well said, sir.

With "friends" like these who needs enemies.

The lack of unity on the right, or more accurately the lack of unity against the socialist state, exacerbated by dinosaurs whose insisted best is the determined enemy of the good, is staggering in the face of what Brown and his gang represent. I bet the latter love the Coffee House, witness the number of provocative, Tory-bashing editorial posts, Labour trolls, faux tradcons and UKIPers who flock here to sow mischief and despair.

All in all I'm rather disgusted with my "enemies" of the right. They need to learn a little about tribalism from Labour and the left.

Blair attempted to modernise Labour but the old guard and cloaked communists like Brown worked strenuously against him. The result is demonstrated by 13 years of negative evidence. Cameron may well be the heir to Blair, leading a party modernised in name only but burdened with a host of whingeing malcontents, more concerned with slagging him off than engaging the common enemy. All of these characters protest "Nobody could detest Labour more than me" etc., in their diatribes, but the damage is done. They are as bad as Labour, putting personal preference, more often prejudice, before their country, which is groaning under the yoke of state socialism.

Personally, I think the country will surprise us on the day of the General Election. Outside the rarified atmosphere of the Coffee House I encounter no-one with a good word for the Brown regime and many who are eager to see its demise. But the leftist cabal who control the narrative are doing their utmost to create a false and, in their eyes, "game changing" shift, even to the extent of the dodgiest polling I have ever seen. In their deadly work they are most ably aided and abetted by the numbskulls on the right who would rather vent their spleen on Cameron, his appearance, his background, his faults, real or imaginary, than focus their anger exclusively against the real enemy.

David Ossitt

Peter From Maidstone.

Thank you Peter if I have done it right this should be bold and this should be italics this in red and this underlined.

I do hope that it works.

David Ossitt

I wonder what went wrong with the colour?

David Ossitt

I wonder what went wrong with the colour?

Peter From Maidstone

sorry, you need to use color not colour. I forgot the internet is American.

So < font color = "red " > Words go here < / font >

Lindsay Nation

What I do find interesting (among other things) on this topic is that not one person has commented on the dismissive remarks of Mr Evans on the Winterton view of "man-made" climate change.

I realise he (Evans) may be just another useful idiot for the "cause", but I don't just accept the off-the cuff views of a pantomime reviewer, no matter how fashionable they be.

David Ossitt

“Last time Mrs W stood up at PMQs she proclaimed her disbelief in climate change”

No she did not; she proclaimed her disbelief in man made climate change.

David Ossitt

Peter

I tried it on the post above ‘man made’ should have come out in red?