Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A shift at the whopper-factory<br />

Crack! The sound of the whips lashing Labour MPs into line today was deafening. And the truth didn’t have a prayer. What a draining, depressing, undemocratic spectacle it was to see Labour’s doomed time-servers put in yet another shift at the government’s whopper-factory. Cameron went to the House with a single tactic, to get the PM to admit that Labour must and will cut spending. Did Brown admit it? Fat chance. Instead he insisted that spending was going up. Not just current spending but capital spending too. Up, up up. He hammered home the notion that the Tories will lower spending by ten percent and lower inheritance tax ‘for the few not the many.’

Cameron was dogged, impatient, sometimes exasperated but he masked his impatience with a few decent quips. After the first softball query from a Labour poodle, Cameron observed, ‘Welcome to Prime Minister’s planted questions.’ He mocked Labour’s attempts to hang the ‘Mr Ten Percent’ tag around Andrew Lansley. ‘Some Labour MPs were confused,’ he said, ‘They thought it meant the Prime Minister’s opinion poll ratings.’ In response to Cameron’s interrogation the PM blithely assert that Cameron had no figures. Cameron offered figures. Treasury figures. ‘Capital spending is going from £44 bn to £20 bn.’  Still Brown told us Cameron had no figures. It’s hard to reason against this deaf-dumb-and-blind approach. Brown doesn’t just lie to the House and the country. He lies to himself too.

Cameron had an awkward moment when he mentioned that the recession had spread across Europe. Inexplicably, this prompted two minutes of Labour jeers and the Tory leader looked uneasy, bobbing and dipping at the despatch box while the Speaker tried to shut the hecklers up. Eventually Cameron collected his thoughts and fired another barb PM-wards.

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