Last week, I said that Cameron should embark on a “save the Brown” exercise and be dull in PMQs, so as to cast the Prime Minister a lifeline. Perhaps he agrees. He was quite flat today, and Brown quite defiant. As always, I measure them against their usual standards – but this was not the scene of a Brown meltdown…
Brown started on Burma, which – if you ask me – he should have stuck to non-stop in the last few days. “I have asked Ban Ki Moon to hold an emergency summit such as Kofi Annan held. I have asked him – and I believe he is considering this – to go there himself.” So if he does go, or if there is a summit, it can be hailed a huge diplomatic triumph for Broon! Oh dear. Britain’s evaporating footprint on the world stage under this internationally invisible Prime Minister is one of the less-scrutinised aspects of the Brown tragedy. Cameron went on this too, not with any highlights.
So Nick Clegg couldn’t believe his luck to be left with the 10p tax issue to himself. “Over a million are still worse off – don’t they matter?” he asked. Queue statistical rapid fire. “We have taken 600,000 children out of poverty” says Brown – at last, he’s stopped rounding this up to “one million”. “Another 300,000 are to be taken out of poverty?” Huh? How so – have his statisticians found a new trick? Clegg again trying his risible Mr Angry act, which is now drawing whoops of derision from the floor. Amazing how quickly he’s becoming a figure of derision.
Planted questions aplenty. Ronnie Campbell: will Brown give temporary workers “real rights?” Funny he should mention that, because PM has plans this afternoon. Dawn Butler talks about the “offensiveness” of the Tory “broken society” description – isn’t it time to review maternity pay? Brown says of the Tories: “they oppose paternity leave and oppose the right to flexible working” – both untrue. Nigel Griffiths had been given a sheet of Brown’s dodgy statistics to recite. Clive Betts demanded action on care for the elderly. By coincidence, Brown has a green paper coming up – after the review three years ago and the Sutherland Commission in 1999. So, more reviews. As ever, Brown’s indecision is final.
I’ll say this for Brown – unlike the Tories he has an attack line and sticks to it. “15% interest rates, inflation at 10%…” he said. He’d better be careful about putting these two together – because one subtracts from the other leaving real interest rates of 5%, which is not a million miles away from what we have now. Brown always uses the nominal interest rate to exaggerate the contrast. He never gets picked up for this.
“That’s what people will remember about the Conservative [singular, as in ‘The Hun’]. They are the 3m unemployed party…. And the country is not going to forget.” Strip away immigration and Thatcher’s record on jobs is far better than Brown’s. And last time I checked, Labour is the 5.2m-on-benefits party. This, too, may be remembered.
Laughter when Brown said he can’t say if he’s going to Crewe. Wrongly so – Prime Ministers never attend by-elections. Not that he’d be allowed within 15 miles of the town, anyway. It’s worth the Tories hiring a Brown lookalike to tread the streets for days – worth at least 5,000 votes.
Brownie Alert. “Education to 18 – opposed by the Conservatives”. It is becoming clear that Balls proposes compulsory education to 18 so he can miss out the “compulsory” bit and misrepresent the Tory position using the above soundbite. He wants to make it sound as if Labour is giving them the opportunity of education to 18, whereas they propose to make it compulsory. This is the government that has such problems with truancy to the age of 16 that one in ten pupils bunk off for a day each week.
So, all told, a low-scoring PMQs for everyone. I leave you with a final thought. Mohammed Sarwar opened proceedings wishing success to Rangers which is “proud to be Scottish and British”. As if. A black friend of mine was in Glasgow as a student, and naively went to sell programmes outside Ibrox stadium on a Saturday afternoon. He was given plenty abuse and told to “f-off back home” – but because he was English. They didn’t care in the slightest that he was black. But I know one Cabinet member for whom Rangers’ success is the only good news he’s getting right now.
P.S. Cameron’s response to Brown’s Not The Queen’s Speech statement was brilliant – in a few short sentences he communicated far better than Brown, who rattled through a laundry list of legislation. Cameron went through each policy, and gave the date the Tories first proposed it. “He can’t say we don’t have any substance when he’s taken it all and put it in his Queen’s Speech.”
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