Miliband finds his niche, and leaves Cameron looking boorish
Lloyd Evans 4:07pm
Miliband is getting the measure of PMQs. Not with respect to Cameron. With respect to
himself. He’s learned that his strongest register — sanctimony — will always ring hollow unless it’s attached to a powerful cause. And his gags don’t work. So
he’s ditched his team of funny men and wise-crackers and turned to his political instincts instead. Miliband’s gut worked today.
He began with a question which he knew Cameron couldn’t answer. Why hasn’t the government activated the laws requiring banks to name all employees earning over a million year? The PM answered by not answering. He performed a transparent switcheroo from the particular question to the general topic. ‘We now have the toughest and most transparent financial regime in world,’ he boasted lamely. He added that banks must publish the salaries of their top eight executives.
Miliband pounced. ‘In case he hadn’t heard,’ he said derisively, ‘there are more than eight people earning over a million a year’. The Prime Minister hadn’t suggested any such thing. Not that this mattered. Miliband had scored. ‘Another broken promise’, he said, from what he called Cameron’s ‘cabinet of millionaires’.
The PM’s engines rapidly started to overheat. ‘It was the last Labour government that agreed the RBS bonus pool of £1.3 billion,’ he yelled. And he accused Miliband of ‘hypocrisy’. Up popped the Speaker. ‘Unparliamentary language.’ Cameron withdrew the verboten label immediately. He even managed to turn this slap down into a sneaky goal when Miliband complained that the Chancellor had just jetted off to Davos to lobby for a reduction in top tax-rates.
In answer to the charge, Cameron climbed languidly to his feet and put his nose in the air like a lyric poet searching for the mot juste. What term, he mused, would best describe a politician, ‘who criticises someone who went to Davos when he’s in Davos himself.’ Much hilarity from the Tories. ‘The word Peter Mandelson used [of Miliband] was “struggling”.’
On the NHS, Miliband regained the upper hand with a simple ploy. He invoked a mighty host of doctors, nurses, mid-wives and other experts who all claim the reforms have ‘destabilised and damaged one of this country’s greatest achievements’.
‘I notice,’ sniffed Cameron, ‘that he doesn’t want to raise the welfare cap’. But he was in a sticky corner on the NHS and he proceeded to spill Superglue all around him. He quoted Tony Blair — yes, him! — on the tough business of ramming home reforms in the face of concerted opposition. ‘if you think a change is right, go with it,’ Blair had blathered somewhere or other. ‘The opposition is inevitable, but rarely is it unbeatable.’ God help us. If this gobbet of guff is the best Cameron can muster in favour of the NHS shake-up, he should ditch the reforms pronto.
Quoting Bambi is a colossal blunder. Ever since Blair bounded out of Downing Street in 2007, the British people have been physically allergic to the mad-eyed globe-trotter and his interminable lecture tour. And now we learn that Mr Cameron snuggles up at night with the war-mongering peacemaker’s collected speeches under the covers, and commits big chunks of them to memory. Not a welcome disclosure. And just in case his folly had gone unnoticed, Cameron underlined it in bold. He attacked his guru — ‘Blair knew a thing or two about bonuses’ — even while invoking his authority. A barmy, ill-thought-out plan.
The Tory backbenches finally swung the debate onto Cameron’s favoured ground. David Nuttall, referring to the cap on benefits, asked about Labour’s ‘something for nothing culture’. Cameron proceeded to sock it to the shilly-shallying opposition. ‘Complete silence,’ he said of their refusal to support the cap. ‘Just nod then,’ he invited. ‘Nod? Nod? No. A great big vacuum.’
Nadhim Zahawi raised the same issue and Cameron rehearsed a commonly held view that the cap is too high. Turning again to the hunched and muted Labour ranks, he taunted them. ‘One more go? One little nod? Nothing.’ We’d now seen enough of this little pantomime. But when Priti Patel challenged Labour to support, ‘those on the side of hard-working families’, Cameron sprang to the despatch box again. He hopped. He danced. He crowed. He gloated. ‘Let me give them one more go. No? Absolutely hopeless.’
This created a distasteful vision of Cameron as a shrill, boorish and rather triumphant little ferret who prefers to blood his enemies rather than dismantling their arguments.
He probably thinks he did all right today. But he sounded like Blair and looked like a bully. Not all right.
Previous
Julian F
February 1st, 2012 4:28pm Report this commentThe Tory Party needs a good bully at its helm.
Olu Ojedokun
February 1st, 2012 4:28pm Report this commentI think Ed Milliband has been written off and underestimated by most of the Tory supporting press. That is where his greatest strength lies in that underestimation…. You watch this space...
Swiss Bob
February 1st, 2012 4:33pm Report this commentHe's got a new script writer, who actually managed one or two jokes that were remotely amusing.
He scored a couple of open goals.
Praise the new messiah.
Pettros
February 1st, 2012 4:44pm Report this comment"a distasteful vision of Cameron as a shrill, boorish and rather triumphant little ferret who prefers to blood his enemies rather than dismantling their arguments"
So true.
Andrew
February 1st, 2012 4:50pm Report this commentDon't agree. Milliband will never have credibility - he is simply an opportunistic hypercritical boy who is an interim leader of Labour until someone more substantial is elected.
Russell
February 1st, 2012 5:26pm Report this commentI have had to re-name the mute button on my remote control from the Brown button to the Miliband button. The mans voice is awful, and what comes out of it even worse.
With a face which contorts into the most repulsive manner and a voice which most human ears cannot bear to hear, the icing on the cake for the coalition is a total lack of ideas on policy and no admission of guilt for the mess labour created in every area of government responsibility.
How anyone can ever say Miliband won at PMQ's is incredible, even when Cameron is poor as he was today.
Liz Brown
February 1st, 2012 5:29pm Report this commentIf putting the boot into money making industry/business/bankers is called "finding your niche" - then God help British business because what his performance showed today is a total lack of understanding is what makes business (and therefore tax revenue) tick.
Neither did his lack of commitment to the very necessary task of reforming the Welfare system show any understanding of what concerns the majority of the population
In my opinion, Britain has become an exceedingly spiteful and unpleasant country and I am not surprised that the young are shunning it in increasing numbers
DZ
February 1st, 2012 5:32pm Report this commentPettros: I think that the description of cameron that you quote fits quite a number of MPs. Don't you?
Frank P
February 1st, 2012 5:33pm Report this commentCobblers!
Miliminor looks exactly what he is, the the lisping spoiled spawn of Marxist parents who knows shit about real life. Unfortunately Cameron is a bad yardstick to judge him by. Maybe one day somebody will find a conservative to lead the Tory party; in the meantime we have to suffer this weekly travesty of the Mother of Parliaments which has been transformed into a Parliament of Mother-s by these brace of twerps. O England, my England, what has become of thee?
Tarka the Rotter
February 1st, 2012 6:14pm Report this comment'Miliband finds his niche...' Would that be one of those on the West Front of Notre Dame, by any chance?
Scotty
February 1st, 2012 6:46pm Report this commentI find it hard to take millie aeriously when he sticks two fingers up to the "millionaires opposite" without commenting on the miilionaires in his own team, including himself. MilliE has never worked in his life and it shows ,yet he is one of the millionaires in labour, not including bliar.
So who is the most sincere - those who dont hide it or those that do, i.e. MilliE and his gang.
Axstane
February 1st, 2012 7:00pm Report this commentWhen Cameron said that banks would be forced to release the salaries of their 8 highest paid staff that was for each bank, not as the idiot Miliband appeared to think, for the whole banking sector.
For heavne's sake, Lloyd Evans, stop pretending to find redeeming features in the policy-less Miliband who has just led his troops to vote against the benefits cap.
George Shepherd
February 1st, 2012 7:09pm Report this commentCameron has faltered badly over the past couple of weeks - being beaten regularly now by Red Ed
His problem is that although he often sounds like he is in control of things, the sad truth is that he isn't
As Tim Montgomerie stated a few weeks back Cameron doesn't do the "hard yards" on building alliances and studying policy in detail
he talks the talk but unfortunately doesn't walk the walk
As Matthew D'Ancona has mentioned elsewhere, Cameron has already decided that the next GE result will be a continuation of the Coalition - #politicalinertia
Paddy
February 1st, 2012 7:13pm Report this comment"Miliband finds his niche"!
Give us a break. Just because he made a joke he won at PMQ's.
Make the most of it.....it won't last!
Cynic
February 1st, 2012 7:18pm Report this comment"Miliband pounced. ‘In case he hadn’t heard,’ he said derisively, ‘there are more than eight people earning over a million a year’." Oooh! More than eight! Nine, then? Or two thousand? Let's hope it's the latter because that will really be bringing the tax revenue in. Oh, sorry, that wasn't what MilliEd meant, was it? We're supposed to be appalled, horrified and ashamed - not to mention envious and desirous of killing the golden geese. He really ought to have had a proper job.
Holly ......
February 1st, 2012 8:42pm Report this commentI haven't seen any real shift in Miliband's performances.
Yes people are angry about the bankers.
The trouble with Miliband is he latches on to what he thinks is the public mood and continues to airbrush out his & Balls's part in it all. This turns our anger to him for being a janus-faced,tartuffe,little gobshite.
Ralph
February 1st, 2012 8:49pm Report this commentMiliband had a good outing, for him, and quoting Blair was probably not the best target for Cameron to use but this post is so over the top as to be laughable. And whatever good Redward did at PMQs was undone later with the vote on the benefit caps.
toni
February 1st, 2012 9:11pm Report this commentFrankP. "Miliminor looks exactly what he is, the the lisping spoiled spawn of Marxist parents who knows shit about real life."
Oooops. Bad form Frank, to criticise family and upbringing.
Dave said so. In fact he said that it's where you're going not where you've come from that matters.
I know some will consider your remark 'class war' or some such silliness, but frankly Frank I'm with you on this, call a spade a spade; after all nobody gives a damn on here, right?
Frank P
February 2nd, 2012 2:41am Report this commenttoni
Ooohhh. We all give a damn, all right! But we phrase it as it is. And H2B sure earned his sobriquet today, didn't he? He obviously knows he's a one-termer and DGAS!
Frank P
February 2nd, 2012 2:48am Report this commentBtw. The apple didn't fall far from the Yew tree in Highgate boneyard, adjacent to Karl, did it? Unfortunately, pissing on it just feeds the roots.
MilkSnatcher
February 2nd, 2012 11:00am Report this comment"Sounded like Blair and looked like a bully?" Cammer's wet dream come true.
Charlie
February 2nd, 2012 11:42am Report this commentWhat an extraordinary load of rubbish. I watched PMQs again last night with my wife, who leans Labour, and even she couldn't see why the media were pretending Miliband had done well. And if you want to know what Miliband's colleagues think, watch Balls' and Harman's face during the first exchange with Cameron. And as for Miliband's comment about fighting a class war against bankers, well; anyone who thinks that that indicates a mind prepared for grown-up politics is an idiot, frankly.
Halcyondaze
February 2nd, 2012 4:30pm Report this commentI recommend anyone who follows this site to read Peter Hitchens's article on the Mail site: "The Tory Party - who needs it?"
This sums up exactly what I've been saying on here for some time - that the new Cnservative Party are no better than Labour and that Cameron is a PR man who will say anything to appease as many factions as possible. That he wasn't skewered for his pathetic capitulation on Europe says it all about where our weakened, confused, left-leaning, self-hating, pro-EU Conservative Party is now at.
Vote UKIP. Who cares if it helps Labour - the current Tory Party are no better.
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