VERDICT: Ed Miliband had it all, going into today’s PMQs: weak growth figures, the uncertain demise of control orders, rising youth unemployment, and more. And yet, somehow, he let most of it go to waste. Barely any of his attacks stuck – or, for that matter, stick in the mind – and Cameron rebuffed them with surprising ease. It helped that the Prime Minister seemed more comprehensively briefed than usual, with a decent compliment of statistics, and one or two sharp lines, at his disposal. (Although, measuring by the Labour cheers, I doubt he will thank Jacob Rees-Mogg for invoking Thatcher immediately after his exchange with the Labour leader.) In the end, a victory for Cameron – although that won’t defuse the issues that Miliband should have detonated.
1233: And that’s it. My quick verdict shortly.
1231: Cameron seems more well-briefed than usual, today. He points out that if we followed Labour’s plan for the deficit, our deficit would still be higher than Portugal’s in four years.
1229: The coaltion is going to use the “son of Brown” attack a lot. Cameron points at Eds Miliband and Balls as he says, “we will find that the problems we have to deal with are the fault of Gordon Brown’s two henchmen opposite.”
1228: The Labour MP Stella Creasy – who is a strong campaigner on issues of personal debt – says that she agree with Cameron that more needs to be done to tackle loan sharks. The Tory benches jokingly implore her to cross the floor to their side. Cameron starts his answer, “At the risk of strengthening our burgeoning friendship…”
1225: In response to today’s youth unemployment figures, Cameron rightly makes the point that this has been a systemic problem for years and years. He calls for cross-party reasonableness in working out why so many young people have shuffled off the economic map, “in good times, and in bad.”
1222: Tom Watson says that a different investigating force should be put in charge of the News of the World investigation. Cameron stresses that phone-hacking is wrong, and that the investigators are pursuing their task with all due diligence, etc.
1218: The House at its worst, as MPs laugh suggestively at a Labour backbencher’s (apologies, I missed who) line that he recently visited a female constituent. Turns out that the lady in question contracted hepatitis from a contaminated blood transfusion.
1215: Backbench questions now. It’s hard to tell whether the Labour or Tory benches are cheering louder as Jacob Rees Mogg quotes Thatcher’s “there is no alternative”
line.
1212: And there’s the first reference to Andy Coulson: Ed Miliband calls Cameron’s judegment into question for “hanging on to him for so long”. Cameron’s return is stinging: if
Ed Miliband thinks Balls is such a good idea, why didn’t he appoint him shadow chancellor in the first place? The two leaders can barely contain their professional disdain for each other.
1210: It’s getting personal – and quick. Miliband refers to Cameron’s “arrogance”. And Cameron says that the Labour leader needs to “stop writing his questions
down”. A return to his “practising in the mirror” quip from last week.
1209: Ed Miliband keeps asking, will the Prime Minister change course? Cameron is getting into his stride, lambasting the idea that Labour left the coalition a “golden
inheritance”. He mentions the deficit, the debt, the banking crisis, and then brings it all back to two figures “who were in the Treasury all the time” – the Labour leader and
his shadow chancellor.
1207: It’s a fast-paced exchange between the two leaders so far. Miliband wastes his second question pointing out – as Cameron did – that, even allowing for the snow, the figures showed flat growth yesterday. After that, it’s ping pong between Cameron’s positon that we should focus on the deficit to catalyse growth, and Miliband’s that we need growth to cut the deficit.
1205: Tee hee. The coalition benches all point at Ed Balls after Ed Miliband asks, “what was the cause of yesterday’s disappointing growth figures?” For his part, Cameron admits that the figures were disappointing – and downplays the weather-based excuse that was trotted out yesterday. “We shouldn’t change tack based on one quarter’s growth figures,” he adds.
1203: A question from the Tory backbenches tees up Cameron to say, “this is a private sector led recovery”.
1201: Here we go. David Cameron starts with the traditional condolences for those who have fallen in Afghanistan, as well as for those killed and injured in the Moscow explosion. The first question is a pertinent one: will there be a fuel duty stabiliser? Cameron says that tax changes should wait for the Budget, but doesn’t rule out the idea.
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200.
Comments