Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lies, laughter and the e-word in PMQs

So Brown kicked off by praising the Speaker for “unfailing personal kindness to all members of all parties of this house.” And with a straight face too! This kindness was the problem, the way Michael Martin ushered everyone to the Fees Office to claim their Generation Game conveyor belt-style goodies. And then it got worse.

Brown says the Royal Mail is “losing 5 million letters a year” – he meant pounds. The House started to softly guffaw, William Hague laughed noiselessly. Brown gets narky: nothing irritates him more than the sound of soft but universal derision. Not the roar of laughter that greeted his “save the banks” – so loud that some Tories I know have it as their mobile phone ringtone. The derision was not disruptive but constant. Hague looked like he had tears in one eye. But Brown refused to keep speaking through it, he stopped and looked over at the Speaker, who duly told the House to shut up.

Then Cameron – “I will never forget the kindness you showed me in 2001”. The mortgage interest repayment form no doubt. Then Cameron goes on to hit a bullseye: what did Brown mean when he said an election will cause chaos? A Tory government would be chaos, Brown replies, to roars from his backbenches. He beams, and looks around in a “didn’t I do well?” kind of way. Well not really, as this was the answer Cameron was waiting for, and he responded by claiming that Brown had just implicitly admitted that the Tories would win the next election.  

Cameron tried that voice-quivers-with-anger thing as he continued to demand an election, custom made for the lunchtime news. And I don’t say this to diss him: the definition of a successful PMQs is getting a ten second slot on the news.

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