This PMQs will be remembered for the Cameron Balls spat. As Cameron was answering a question from a Labour MP, he snapped at Balls who was heckling him, shouting ‘you don’t know the answer, you’re not properly briefed, why don’t you just say you’ll write to her’. A visibly irritated Cameron shot back, ‘I wish the shadow Chancellor would shut up and listen for once’. At this the Labour benches erupted, their aim at PMQs is always to get Cameron to lose his temper and they had succeeded.
Cameron then produced a brilliant comeback, saying that Balls was ‘the most annoying person in British politics’ and ‘I suspect that the leader of the opposition will come to agree with me. ’ But the whole incident was not a good one for him. Prime Ministers shouldn’t lose their temper in the chamber.
PMQs started with some good natured banter about Miliband’s coming nuptials. Miliband said he’d be asking for Cameron’s advice on stag dos given his past form on the subject. Cameron joked that ‘when I was leader of then opposition I would have done anything to have a honeymoon and I suspect he feels the same way.’ But the mood quickly soured.
When one Labour MP asked Cameron about something Cameron had said about him during the election, Cameron shot back that he didn’t remember saying it as ‘I had absolutely no idea who he was.’ This angered the Labour benches who then got even more cross when Cameron thought a question about government cuts to English-language training for immigrants was about student visas.
One other notable thing about PMQs was Cameron endorsing a Hampshire Tory MP’s implicit attack on Chris Huhne for making political mischief out of the possible closure of Sure Start centres there.
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