It started as soon as Ed Miliband stood up at PMQs today. ‘Nightmare!’ yelled the Tories. ‘Nightmare!’
They’d been fired up by the first question from Steve Brine, who craftily double-loaded his query. He referenced the Co-op bank and the ‘nightmare email’ in one sentence.
Would the PM respond, he asked, ‘to grave concerns about the nightmare unfolding at the Co-operative?’
Cameron pretended to be all serious. He fretted about the regulatory controls and about safeguarding the bank without fleecing the tax-payer.
‘Nightmare!’ goaded the Tories.
Ed Balls, seated beside Miliband, flushed puce. Not a natural Trappist, the shadow chancellor is clearly under orders to shut his gob during PMQs. He tries to silence himself by forcing his lips together in the middle. But this makes the ends curl skywards into a randy smirk. It’s bizarre. He looks a tipsy dowager eyeing up the groundsman.
Miliband surprised the PM with an ambush. He asked about Cameron’s campaign to preserve the Chipping Norton kiddies’ centre, which is in his own constituency. On a normal day this would be hilariously damaging: a NIMBY prime minister crusading against government policy on his own patch.
But not today. Cameron used sly statistics to wriggle out of trouble. Of the nation’s 3,000 children’s centres, he said, only one per cent is being closed. The percentage sounds far less disreputable than the integer. Had Cameron admitted to abolishing ‘thirty children’s centres’, he’d be in Herod territory.
He shifted onto the attack. Labour, he said, hoped to increase childcare with cash from their magic inflatable bank levy. ‘But they’ve already spent it ten times over.’ He rattled through a list of measures Labour plans to fund by mugging City fat-cats.
‘That’s not a policy. It’s a night out with Reverend Flowers.’
The Rev-counter was up and running.
Michael Meacher fancied a grumble about the economy. He claimed that the UK has slithered into 159th place in some hall of infamy that measures inward investment. ‘When are we going to catch up with Mali?’ he chuntered.
Wrong figures, said Cameron. The UK wins more inward investment than any economy in the world. He wondered aloud if Meacher had been taking ‘mind-altering substances’ with Rev Flowers.
Meacher didn’t like being used to ratchet up the Rev-counter. He simmered and glowered during a question from Steven O’Brien about fuel duty. Where would prices be now, asked O’Brien, if the Coalition had implemented all Labour’s tax rises? ‘It’d be a nightmare,’ replied the Prime Minister.
‘Nightmare,’ wailed the Tories, gleefully. ‘Nightmare!’
And still Meacher smouldered on his pew. Only as the over-running session ended did his fury boil over. He leaped up and demanded to make a point of order. He huffed that Cameron’s gag about ‘mind-altering substances’ was rude, offensive, unjustifiable and unparliamentary. Loud gibbon noises followed, (not all of them hostile). Speaker Bercow called for calm in the monkey-house and noted that the PM was keen to reply. The parping and honking took time to die down. So Meacher decided to trawl through his testy complaint once again. More delay. Cameron offered to withdraw but claimed there should be a place for ‘light-hearted banter’ on both sides.
‘Shame, shame!’ cried Labour’s backbenchers as they headed out. And it was a shame. Meacher had made them late for lunch.
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