Strange mood at PMQs today. Rather good-natured. Like a staff awayday with both sides joshing each other for fun. A Tory from the shires, Pauline Latham (Con, Mid-Derbyshire), stood up in her best
garden-party dress and made this lament:
Labour MPs cheered like mad. They wouldn’t have done that before the local elections.‘My constituents are having a very difficult time at the moment.’
Cameron and Miliband were in a similarly playful mood. After an enforced separation of two weeks they seemed almost glad to see one other. Ed Miliband charmingly conceded that today’s drop in unemployment was welcome. And Cameron welcomed this welcome from his opponent.
Miliband then teased Cameron for failing to talent-spot Francois Hollande three months ago, and for omitting to meet the new French President before he swept to power. Perhaps Cameron could send him a text and sign it ‘LOL’.
Cameron enjoyed that one. He responded with a venerable joke that last stalked the earth during the Brownian Age. ‘At least I know how to use a mobile phone’ he said, ‘rather than just throwing it at the people who work for me.’ He pointed knowingly at Brown’s disciples on the Labour benches.
He then enlisted M Hollande on his side and claimed that the French president had already trashed Labour’s spend-’n’-borrow policies. ‘The solution,’ said Cameron, quoting M Hollande, ‘cannot be extra public spending because we need to rein it in.’
A flurry of outrage from Labour. Was this true? When did he say that? Was Cameron fibbing? It didn’t matter. Cameron’s target wasn’t the truth. It was Ed Balls. Someone has told the shadow chancellor to button his lip during PMQs, and his silence has deprived the Prime Minister of a useful distraction during tricky questions.
Cameron has devised a counter-strategy: goad Balls. Cattle-prod the old trouble-maker into leaping about and putting Miliband off his game.
So Cameron went on discussing economic policy. ‘Our interest rates are lower than two per cent,’ he said blandly. Meanwhile he had settled, like a mosquito, on the flesh of Ed Balls. Then he quoted him. ‘The simplest measure of fiscal credibility,’ Balls had said, ‘is long-term low interest rates.’ The Cameron proboscis dug in and sucked out fresh blood. Balls was incensed. He lurched forward in his seat and began wriggling and squirming and muttering and fuming. Then he remembered his official orders: shut your trap and sit still.
Miliband tried taking a pop at Cameron over falling numbers of police and nurses. Shiftily the PM denied both accusations. He said the ‘proportions’ of front-line coppers are on the rise. And he avoided mentioning ‘nurses’ at all. He said ‘clinical staff numbers’ had increased but this probably includes people who serve Jammie Dodgers to doctors, and who dust down the modern art in our hospital corridors.
His evasiveness was palpable. Then he started getting angry. He wanted to remind us that Labour cannot match the government’s freeze on police pay. But as soon as he mentioned their spokesman, Yvette Cooper, he seemed to teeter on the verge of fury.
‘Calm down!’ came the cry from Labour.
Cameron stopped and smirked. With a grand sweep of his hands, like a sea god smoothing troubled oceans, he said, ‘I’m extremely calm.’ And he was. For a few minutes.
During backbench questions he got a dressing-down from Dan Jarvis, Labour’s lean and mean-eyed member for Barnsley. Jarvis accused Cameron of increasing home-care charges, ‘after cutting a billion pounds from local budgets’. Wrong figures, said Cameron. Two billion more is going into social care and a white paper this year will…
‘When!’ shouted Jarvis from his far-off seat.
‘When?!’ echoed Cameron, swallowing the bait whole. ‘They had 13 years to do this! They ducked decision after decision!’ he yelled. ‘We’ve done more in two years than they did in 13!’
In a way it’s heartening to the PM getting so easily fired up. He may even enjoy these flashes of temper. But he doesn’t enjoy them half as much as Labour.
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