Ed looks more dead than deadly

If Roman Abramovich owned the Labour party, Ed Miliband would be toast by now. The floundering opposition leader gave the sort of inept, predictable and ill-organised performance at PMQs that would get a manager sacked in the Premiership. It scarcely helps that Mr Miliband seems to prepare for these sessions like a deluded psychic. He and his team of prophets at Labour HQ clearly believe they can foretell what the prime minster will say and how best to smash his answers to pieces. Referring to the rise in unemployment, Mr Miliband began by attacking the PM for scrapping the Future Jobs Fund in March. He boasted, rather weirdly, that ‘under Labour, youth unemployment never reached 1 million.’

Cameron explained in detail how the new Work Programme is much speedier and more efficient than the Future Jobs Fund, ‘which just put graduates into public sector employment.’

This landed Ed in difficulty. His memorised script suggested that he call the PM’s answer ‘lots of bluster’, which it clearly wasn’t. What did Ed do? He called the PM’s answer lots of bluster. Cameron then told us that the government’s deficit reduction plan was helping to keep interest rates low and protect family budgets. Ed glanced at his script. ‘When it goes wrong, the PM blames everyone but himself,’ it said. So Ed recited that as well.

Then he had a go at the government’s attempts to boost growth. The PM replied, again in detail, that our growth may be a bit sluggish but it’s still neck and neck with Germany’s and America’s. And it’s a damn sight nippier than it would be if we followed Ed’s plan to extend the national mortgage by £100 bn. ‘Out of touch. And complacent,’ was the response predicted by Miliband’s clique of Delphic rhetoricians. ‘Out of touch and complacent,’ said Miliband in his dreariest Presbyterian tones. The insults bounced straight back and splatted him in the face.

Miliband then revealed to a startled house that he had discovered the solution to youth unemployment, albeit rather late in his career. ‘Get those on the highest incomes to help those with no income at all,’ he ordered the prime minister. ‘Tax bankers’ bonuses and create 120,000 jobs for young people.’ Simple as that.

Cameron, with his lip curling into a Heseltinian smirk, jumped gleefully on this inept daydream. ‘Another new use for the bonus tax,’ he mocked. ‘There have been nine already.’ He rattled off a wish-list of projects ear-marked for bank-sourced subsidies, including ‘converting empty shops into community centres’.

Mr Miliband’s glum face now resembled a deflated soufflé. An air of defeat hung over him and he looked like an over-promoted cashier trying to run the shop while the boss is at the bookie’s. Piously, he lamented that the prime minister was ‘playing politics with youth unemployment.’ Which brilliantly highlighted the fact that Mr Miliband was playing politics with youth unemployment. The Tories erupted with sarcastic laughter. And Speaker Bercow had to shut them up so that we could enjoy the sight of Labour’s leader entangling himself in more self-made muddles.

But he’d had enough. As Cameron denounced the opposition front bench as ‘the people who got us into this mess in the first place’, Miliband looked positively relieved to have used up all his questions.

The Tory backbenches, in a rare display of co-ordinated action, took aim at Labour over next week’s union-inspired day of rest. Andrew Bingham called it ‘wholly irresponsible’ to call a strike on such small turnout. And David Cameron declared that only a quarter of the biggest unions’ memberships had recommended the strike. Meanwhile, he said, 86 per cent of Labour donations in the last year had come from the unions. Louise Mensch asked the prime minister to help parents to take their kids to work while their teachers devote themselves to 24 hours of ‘action’. And when John Whittingdale mentioned a report by the Taxpayers Alliance he was loudly jeered by Labour members. But the prime minister took his side and praised the Taxpayers Alliance. ‘At least they don’t pay us to put down amendments for them,’ he added spikily.

An easy day for Cameron. And Ed Miliband needs to shift tactics or the desire to shift him will start to grow. For now, only an ancient party tradition keeps him in place. Labour loves a loser.