With four more troops dead in Afghanistan, the campaign in Helmand led PMQs. Gordon Brown wished to pay tribute, and I’m afraid it did not go well. “The freedoms that we have in Britain are in no small part due to the fact that we have taken on the Taleban in Afghanistan and refused them to allow to break the democracy of Afghanistan,” he said. Garbled nonsense: I agree that the cause in Afghanistan is noble but in what way are British freedoms “due” to the Afghan campaign? I’m not even sure what Brown was trying to say. Paying tribute to the military does not come naturally to him, as we all saw. Cameron looked almost sorry for Brown as he drowned in his own words. “I thank him for his reply,” he said before moving on to Europe.
Lisbon is today’s hot topic and Cameron had a few good lines cooked up. Lisbon was “a treaty he was so ashamed of, he had to sign it in a room all of his own,” he said to Brown. “If he wants a British view, why doesn’t he ask the British people.” At this point, David Miliband did one of his gestures where he screws up his face and rolls his eyes heavenwards. He really must learn not to do that, it enforces the [misguided] criticism of him as arrogant and aloof.
As so often, Brown dusted down out a script written in the mid-1990s. He referred to Maastricht (which he mispronounced, so it rhymes with “ostrich”) and said the Tories didn’t have a referendum then and wouldn’t do so in office. Cameron was ready for that. “The Prime Minister asks us if we want a post-ratification referendum. Ratifying what, exactly, after this Irish ‘no’ vote?” Precisely. Brown was later asked how he thinks a referendum would go, and his reply was simply extraordinary. “The last time there was a referendum it was won by two votes to one”. That was the 1975 referendum to join a Common Market – a fundamentally different proposition to the kind of political union outlined in the Lisbon Treaty.
Peter Hain made a backbench comeback on the cause if Zimbabwe. Hugo Swire also asked about it, making the pertinent point that China is shoring up Mugabe, and Beijing should be told by London that we’re on its case. Both of them will like our Spectator cover story on Zimbabwe by Peter Oborne tomorrow.
Disconcertingly, Nick Clegg made an environmental point I sympathise with. He referred to the “huge subsidy” which the daft emissions trading scheme gives to big companies – £9bn, he reckons. Why subsidise them when ordinary families can’t pay their fuel bill? Brown says winter fuel payment/election bribe is £300 for over-80s – as he knows, a rise which does not keep pace with the rampant fuel inflation. “Those measures are tinkering at the edges, I’m not sure he knows what pressures families are under,” Clegg said. The Spanish government got back €1bn of its subsidies, why can’t Brown do the same? A clever point which had Brown on the backfoot.
Denis MacShane drew groans when he stood up, and asked us to congratulate France for its moves back to Nato. When the Irish “no” vote came through last week, Macshane was overheard to say of the British public “would bring back hanging and kick out immigrants” if they had too much power. As my predecessor Bruce Anderson once said, there are some Labour MPs who would do anything for the working class except like them.
The best question came from Michael Spicer “Why are there always so many strikes at the end of a Labour government?” This brought shrieks of delight from some parts of the house. For the end is indeed near. As every dismal performance by Gordon Brown makes clear.
P.S. Brown also said it was untrue that there are plans to merge the “English and British and French navies”. The Scottish Navy was merged with the Royal Navy in 1707 – putting its paltry three ships to the 277 commanded by England. The Prime Minister is a bit behind the times.
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