Miliband’s in a mess. He makes it far too easy for Cameron to portray him as a hypocritical opportunist who sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. How come? Perhaps because he sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. Today he tried to unsettle the PM with the news that ‘members of his government’ (ie LibDems) ‘have given cast-iron guarantees that they would vote against a rise in tuition fees.’ This isn’t a Cameron problem. It’s a Clegg problem. Right issue, wrong tactics.
Cameron had no difficulty adopting a noble but weary expression and praising his coalition partners for taking ‘courageous decisions’ in ‘difficult’ circumstances. Having made his opponent look pragmatic and statesmanlike, Miliband tried to score points from Cameron’s decision to put his personal photographer on the civil service payroll. ‘Apparently he does a nice line in airbrushing,’ teased Miliband as he set himself up for a satirical routine which had been lovingly polished this morning by his gag-writers in the green-room. ‘You can picture the cabinet photo,’ chortled Labour’s Ronnie Corbett. ‘We’re all in this together. Just a little bit more to the right, Nick.’ Then with a shift of mood, and with his voice modulated to a pious baritone, he implored the PM: ‘Is it really a wise judgement when he’s telling everyone to tighten their belts?’
Cameron reacted with Paxmanesque disbelief. ‘Is this what his leadership has been reduced to?’ He fulminated about the ‘half a billion wasted by the previous government on communications’. The rhetoric was forceful and it came from the heart. Miliband’s attempt to contrast a single government appointment with the hundreds of thousands facing the axe seemed callow and superficial.
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