With a little help from the Daily Telegraph, David Cameron staged an ambush for Gordon Brown at PMQs today – the letter to Keith Vaz from Geoff Hoon promising he will be “rewarded” for supporting the government. It went up on the Telegraph website just before midday, and either David Cameron’s Blackberry is working with efficient speed or he had advance notice. Certainly more notice than Brown who was stuffed. Poor Hoon tried to look composed, knowing the television cameras would be turning to him. But his face went beetroot red, as Cameron read out his letter to Vaz. “I wanted you to know how much I appreciated all your help … I trust that it will be appropriately rewarded!” It was a gotcha moment.
As Brown was saying Mr Vaz supported the legislation because he believed to be right, a strange moment then set in. It looked as if Brown was looking for an intervention from the backbenches, which of course you can’t do at PMQs. Then Michael Martin decided Brown had spoken, that Cameron didn’t have a follow-up, and it went straight on to another backbench question. Tories looked around puzzled: what had happened? They were mid-ambush. No one knew. Bungling Mr Martin had let Brown off the hook.
Just as well for him. He was back in fine word-mangling form, referring to his boozy Iraqi aunt “Alcky Eda” and being outclassed by Nick Clegg who is starting to get the hang of PMQs. He’s finally stopped his Mr Angry act and complained about a two-tier mental health provision on the NHS. (Alan Milburn used to say that he’d be happy with two tier – the NHS service was so unequal and served the poor so badly it was multi-tier). An extra £1.1bn has been spent on mental health said Brown, as if this was a defence. “He’s doing it again, he’s confusing a list with action” says Clegg. Bang on – confusing motion with progress is a main defect of this government.
When Cameron came back, he went on reoffending lags on early release. Brown reeled off statistics, again saying it was “quite wrong” to say he refused to build more prisons as he in fact “increased prison population from 60,000 to 80,000”. As everyone knows, this isn’t the point. Deplorably, he failed failure to accommodate the Home Office’s own projections. This brilliant post from Wat Tyler shows how the prisons problem was both predictable and predicted.
Cameron was having none of it. “It is no consolation to the victims of this violence that he reads out this list of completely irrelevant figures,” he said. Both he and Clegg are right to do this. In Brown’s head, these figures are programmed into the public’s mind, and make arguments in themselves. In truth, voters make no sense of this statistical babble. You do sometimes wonder if this is the only song Brown can sing.
Labour MPs were fairly upbeat, though, and loved Brown’s little peroration which he prepared for Cameron’s last question. “They talk tough on terrorism and act soft… Whenever big decisions are made, they duck the big issues” etc. Labour MPs made that strange sound when the “o” in “more” is held as if in a bad Welsh choir and resonates around the chamber.
“Robert Mugabe is a brutal thug” says Chris Bryant and compares him to Pinochet in Chile. Em, I think Bryant will find that Pinochet resigned in 1988 when he lost a referendum on his rule – and Mugabe is holding on no matter what. I note how these lefties always use Pinochet as the bête noire rather than choosing one of the many leftist dictators – like Castro, for example. For more on Castro v Pinochet see here. And for all Pinochet’s brutality, which country is in better health today: Cuba or Chile?
Stephen Crabb asked if Brown will go to Glasgow East – Brown’s response was pathetic. “He’s got the chance to ask about any issue…. Once again they have resorted to trivia when they could ask sensible and serious questions”. Now and again, you wonder what Blair would have said. “He should know that Prime Ministers never campaign in by-elections, so it’s a daft question. But the rule doesn’t cover former Prime Ministers so if John Major wants to come and campaign in Glasgow East to remind them what they’re missing, he’d be more than welcome.” Except Blair would have been wittier.
In spite of this, I will again incur all your wrath by saying I’ve seen a lot better from Cameron and that Brown’s performance was not amongst his worst and his troops left quite happy – before the significance of the Vaz letter sank in.
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