Brown survives PMQs
Fraser Nelson 1:35pm
Last week, I said that Cameron should embark on a “save the Brown” exercise and be dull in PMQs, so as to cast the Prime Minister a lifeline. Perhaps he agrees. He was quite flat today, and Brown quite defiant. As always, I measure them against their usual standards – but this was not the scene of a Brown meltdown...
Brown started on Burma, which – if you ask me – he should have stuck to non-stop in the last few days. “I have asked Ban Ki Moon to hold an emergency summit such as Kofi Annan held. I have asked him – and I believe he is considering this – to go there himself.” So if he does go, or if there is a summit, it can be hailed a huge diplomatic triumph for Broon! Oh dear. Britain’s evaporating footprint on the world stage under this internationally invisible Prime Minister is one of the less-scrutinised aspects of the Brown tragedy. Cameron went on this too, not with any highlights.
So Nick Clegg couldn’t believe his luck to be left with the 10p tax issue to himself. “Over a million are still worse off – don’t they matter?” he asked. Queue statistical rapid fire. “We have taken 600,000 children out of poverty” says Brown – at last, he’s stopped rounding this up to “one million”. “Another 300,000 are to be taken out of poverty?” Huh? How so - have his statisticians found a new trick? Clegg again trying his risible Mr Angry act, which is now drawing whoops of derision from the floor. Amazing how quickly he’s becoming a figure of derision.
Planted questions aplenty. Ronnie Campbell: will Brown give temporary workers “real rights?” Funny he should mention that, because PM has plans this afternoon. Dawn Butler talks about the “offensiveness” of the Tory “broken society” description – isn’t it time to review maternity pay? Brown says of the Tories: “they oppose paternity leave and oppose the right to flexible working” – both untrue. Nigel Griffiths had been given a sheet of Brown’s dodgy statistics to recite. Clive Betts demanded action on care for the elderly. By coincidence, Brown has a green paper coming up – after the review three years ago and the Sutherland Commission in 1999. So, more reviews. As ever, Brown’s indecision is final.
I’ll say this for Brown – unlike the Tories he has an attack line and sticks to it. “15% interest rates, inflation at 10%...” he said. He’d better be careful about putting these two together – because one subtracts from the other leaving real interest rates of 5%, which is not a million miles away from what we have now. Brown always uses the nominal interest rate to exaggerate the contrast. He never gets picked up for this.
“That’s what people will remember about the Conservative [singular, as in ‘The Hun’]. They are the 3m unemployed party…. And the country is not going to forget.” Strip away immigration and Thatcher’s record on jobs is far better than Brown’s. And last time I checked, Labour is the 5.2m-on-benefits party. This, too, may be remembered.
Laughter when Brown said he can’t say if he’s going to Crewe. Wrongly so - Prime Ministers never attend by-elections. Not that he’d be allowed within 15 miles of the town, anyway. It’s worth the Tories hiring a Brown lookalike to tread the streets for days – worth at least 5,000 votes.
Brownie Alert. “Education to 18 – opposed by the Conservatives”. It is becoming clear that Balls proposes compulsory education to 18 so he can miss out the “compulsory” bit and misrepresent the Tory position using the above soundbite. He wants to make it sound as if Labour is giving them the opportunity of education to 18, whereas they propose to make it compulsory. This is the government that has such problems with truancy to the age of 16 that one in ten pupils bunk off for a day each week.
So, all told, a low-scoring PMQs for everyone. I leave you with a final thought. Mohammed Sarwar opened proceedings wishing success to Rangers which is “proud to be Scottish and British”. As if. A black friend of mine was in Glasgow as a student, and naively went to sell programmes outside Ibrox stadium on a Saturday afternoon. He was given plenty abuse and told to “f-off back home” - but because he was English. They didn’t care in the slightest that he was black. But I know one Cabinet member for whom Rangers' success is the only good news he's getting right now.
P.S. Cameron’s response to Brown’s Not The Queen’s Speech statement was brilliant – in a few short sentences he communicated far better than Brown, who rattled through a laundry list of legislation. Cameron went through each policy, and gave the date the Tories first proposed it. “He can’t say we don’t have any substance when he’s taken it all and put it in his Queen’s Speech.”
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Comments
Tiberius
May 14th, 2008 2:16pmI don't normally see PMQs so I rely on the comments here for a flavour, but thanks to Peter's video link, I have seen today's event. In all honesty, Fraser, I think Cameron won by a mile. Brown answered none of his very pertinent questions, choosing instead to respond with irrelevancies or ancient history. As Cameron pointed out, people want him to be straight about his mistakes and talk about the future, both of which he won't, indeed probably dare not.
Bernard from Horsham
May 14th, 2008 2:25pmIs there a link please to Camerons reply to the Queens speech? If so can you post it.
Thanks
Oscar
May 14th, 2008 3:06pmCameron's reply to the (draft/daft) Queen's speech was definitely the highlight (a link would be excellent). The BBC is even using a clip from Cameron's response in their news bulletins.
Mark
May 14th, 2008 3:12pmI thought Cameron won, but it wasn't a massacre. I suspet he knew that the draft Queen's Speech would be the big news today and saved his best stuff for his reply.
Fraser Nelson
May 14th, 2008 3:33pmTiberius, it's a real problem on PMQs because Cameron will always win against Brown. A flat Cameron beat a defiant Brown this time. This mismatch in ability renders the "who won" question daft, so I have started judging them by their par performances. Given the last 24 hours, one may have expected a massacre - which, as Mark says, didn't happen. And I dont think Cameron had his machine gun out anyway. Oscar, if the BBC is using Cameron's reply then he's won the PMQs battle. Because a clip in the headlines is the objective.
Trumpeter Lanfried
May 14th, 2008 4:10pmFrazer, I think, with respect, you are misreading PMQs because, as someone said of Iain Dale, you are an insider and you value insider skills. Brown is quite simply appalling at PMQs, week after week. All he has is bluster, aggression and a gramophone recording of dodgy statistics. His refusal to address the question - any question - has gone beyond a joke. It is quite simply disreputable. He demeans his office.
AlanofEngland
May 14th, 2008 4:42pmCan we all please, once and for all, tell Mr Without Mandate Brown who needs a history lesson, that prices rose fastest EVER in 1975, peaking at 26.9 per cent in August 1975, and increasing by 24.2 per cent over the year as a whole. All groups except clothing and footwear
and housing experienced their highest recorded annual
increase during this year, with inflation for each exceeding
20 per cent. The Budget that year raised indirect taxes
substantially, and extended the then 25 per cent rate of VAT to
cover a wide range of luxury goods. That led to what was, at
the time, the highest month-on-month increase ever recorded
in the RPI of 4.2 per cent in May. The monthly rates for
alcohol, tobacco and durable household goods in that month
are the highest on record.
These statistics are official, and who was the PM at the time, no less than LABOUR HAROLD WILSON!!
AlanofEngland
May 14th, 2008 4:47pmBrown does indeed demean his office, with a phrase he used today...."regions and nations of the country". So which country is it? The UK isn't a country, nor is GB. He was speaking in London, in Westminster Parliament, which as I can recall is still in ENGLAND. He can't bring himself to mention the fact that the Union is in meltdown because HE and his party devolved Scotland.
Nicholas
May 14th, 2008 4:58pmI agree with the Trumpeter on this one. Brown keeps bleating about what the Tories allegedly did 15 years ago as though some dodgy spin doctor has told him to keep making these irrelevant and laughable "points". The irony is that Brown has just done something he constantly accuses the Tories of doing, funded a tax concession without the means to do so. And he was forced to do this in abject fear that the socialist beast growing in his government would bring him down.
Ironic that the last thing this government has, popularity, is the one thing that drives all of its desperate, day-to-day and knee-jerk "policy".
After the sham gravity of prudence and the stubborn refusal to make concessions over police pay, Brown throws 2.7 billion on the table of public and party opinion. It is worse than disreputable. It is party political conniving of the lowest order. When Brown faces Cameron at the dispatch box it is all about party political scoring against the Tories. And not even the current Tories, but the Tories of John Major!
My disgust with it reached such a high point today that I actually switched off, unable to watch the pathetic charade any longer. My feeling was akin to physical revulsion that anyone, anyone, in this country could be taken in by this obsessive, bellowing, bullying monster and his horrible finger pointing.
Oscar
May 14th, 2008 5:14pmI think Fraser offers a fair assessment. The fact is Cameron chose not to go in for the kill today and the result was as Fraser describes it - Brown survived. Cameron can demolish Brown (as he did last week) as and when he chooses - he's the master of his own performance. Brown flails around at Cameron's mercy. Today Cameron was relatively merciful. He no doubt judged that the news would focus on the (non) Queens speech. And, tactical as ever, he got that right.
David
May 14th, 2008 5:25pmI watched PMQs this week and was interested in Cameron`s approach to Brown`s responses - which as usual did not answer Cameron`s questions - by saying "Why can`t he give a straight answer to a straight question". It seems that repetition of this approach could, over time, be as effective in branding Brown as the "ditherer" charge which seems to have become an embedded idea about Brown. I should appreciate your view of this way of dealing with non-answers.
Travis Bickle
May 14th, 2008 5:50pmThe best question was from a Tory backbencher "without the history lesson could you please answer whether you have made any mistakes in recent weeks?
Cue the first Brownie "I already admitted I made a mistake " Yeh right, Pinocchio you'll never be a real boy, then comically " 15 years blah blah blah record repossessions blah blah zzzzzzzzzz"
Ann
May 14th, 2008 6:20pmNicholas, the fact is that we have a pathological liar as a PM: not a politician who lies sometimes for reasons of expediency, but a man who needs treatment for his compulsive lying (and I mean this with a certain degree of compassion - not complete compassion, because he and his disreputable minions, who don't even have that defence, are screwing us over, but some).
This is, as far as I know, the first time that a PM and his glove puppet have had to introduce such a dishonest budget between budgets - and they are lying about the reasons, they are lying flat out about the effects (a great many people will still LOSE OUT!), and they are lying about the circumstances.
salieri
May 14th, 2008 7:13pmWell I've just replayed the whole thing and the words "I already admitted I made a mistake" escaped me. What he said, rather, was: "We admitted at the time we should have done things better."
Note this distinction. In the days when credit was to be taken for anything it was always "I". Now, when fingers are pointing at Brown, it is always, always "we". Either that or, worse, the craven Nazi-passive ("mistakes were made"). When direct answers are required of him the man is as spineless as he is shameless.
Oscar
May 14th, 2008 9:10pmDavid Cameron's response to Brown's 'not the Queen's speech' was superb. Cam absolutely on top form and the Apprentice joke was very funny.
Jumbo O'Reilly
May 14th, 2008 10:35pmPaxo has just opened Newsnight with the "Brown as Apprentice" motif
Fraser Nelson
May 14th, 2008 11:12pmTrumpeter, you're dead right - it's an occupational hazard for the likes of me. I have no doubt that an average voter parachuted into the gallery would see Brown getting creamed. Or just see lots of creepy politicians shouting at each other. I spend my life listening to both men, so my yardsticks are bent. This is why CoffeeHousers' contributions are so valuable - they balance our view from the Westminster Village.