Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 3 March 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200.

1201: And here we go.  Obviously, with Brown meeting Zuma, it’s the deputies today. Harman starts with condolences for the fallen.

1202: Incidentally, Cameron is being interviewed on TalkSport radio, if you want to listen to that.

1203: First question: why manufacturing has fallen under Labour. Harman says that this is the Tories “talking the country down”. Hm. Easier than actually answering the question, I suppose…

1204: This PMQs is already getting noisily partisan.  A second question brings some “do nothing Tories” innuendo from Harman.  Jeers and cheers all round.

1206: Hague now.  His first question is whether Brown was wrong to cut the helicopter budget.

1207: Harman responds with some platitudes about being “committed” to the armed forces.  Hague says he wasn’t questioning that, just whether a “mistake” was made with the helicopter budget.

1208: Harman stumbles and calls Hague the “foreign secretary”.  Hague jokily picks up on this, and then asks why British debt is seen as riskier than that of McDonalds.

1209: Harman says that the value of Sterling (erm, which is somehting else) depends on a “lot of factors”.  Then spins her previous stumble on its head – saying that Hague is assuming the Tories will win.  The she bangs on, clumsily, about Ashcroft.  This is dispiriting stuff.

1211: Snappy response from Hague.  He points out that the question wasn’t about Sterling.  That Harman’s slip assumed the Tories would win the next election.  That “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” when it comes to party funding.  On this final point, he highlights Unite – and Harman’s husband, Jack Dromey, who has “passed through an ‘all-women’ shortlist to become a Labour candidate.”

1213: This PMQs isn’t going to restore people’s faith in politics.  Harman – rather than answering any questions – is still going on about Ashcroft, putting questions to Hague. 

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