Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs or St Paul’s protest?

The Hair Shirt walked abroad at PMQs today. Those attending the Square Mile sleepover finally forced their agenda into the political mainstream. The question is, what is their agenda? A protest that doesn’t define its programme allows others to define it for them. And today both party leaders tried to harness the anti-capitalist spirit for their own political ends. Ed Miliband claimed to be scandalised by a recent, and arguable, surge of 49 per cent in directors’ pay. He demanded that the PM take action.

Cameron seemed equally appalled at the news that fat cats have been getting fatter during the recession. But he wasn’t taking any sermons from Labour. He berated Miliband for belonging to a government that ‘failed to regulate banks for 13 years,’ and whose revenue system taxed City bosses less than their cleaners. ‘This is the party that claimed to be intensely relaxed about getting filthy rich,’ said Cameron, his pink jowls shaking self-righteously. ‘He’s got a bit of a nerve to lecture us.’

Although Cameron didn’t quite take a vow of poverty on the floor of the House, he seemed delighted to be able to quote the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘Dr Williams spoke for the whole country,’ the Prime /Minister intoned glowingly, ‘when he said it is unacceptable, in a period of difficulty, for people at the top not to show responsibility.’ The Archbishop rarely features in our day-to-day politics like this. He has just two constitutional functions. Plonking the crown on a new sovereign’s head. And embracing anti-toff sentiment at times of strife in order to render it harmless.

And Cameron, having activated this latter role, built on it by outlining the rest of his anti-rich programme. The new bank levy, he said, has raised £millions.

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