Dodge and shimmy. Duck and weave. Cameron was at it again today.
Ed Miliband asked if he’d care to join him for a spot of cut and thrust on TV. One to one. He had a date, 30 April, pencilled in for the gig. Kettle crisps and a glass of merlot on the PM’s rider.
Tricky. Cameron would rather knight Rolf Harris, ennoble Gary Glitter and grant Myra Hindley a posthumous pardon than grapple with his main foe on live TV. So his course was clear. Dodge without appearing to dodge.
Miliband pressed the question and forced his quarry onto the defensive but Cam’s camera-phobia won’t achieve cut-through with the public.
Much harder to duck on immigration. The famous Tory vow about ‘tens of thousands’ has been smashed more comprehensively than any promise in recent political history.
Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands, actually. Each year three packed Wembley stadiums, and a couple of Wimbledon centre courts, arrive here with their bursting suitcases bound in knotted string. That’s four new constituencies of voters. Or a third of Birmingham. Or two new Ipswichs and a bit. Or four and a half Guildfords.
An extra Manchester every 24 months.
Quote a crowd. And that excludes the radar-evaders whose tally may equal, or even exceed, the numbers checking in legally.
What did Cam do when asked to explain? Implode with remorse and sink through a hole in the floor? No he borrowed a leaf from the Tony Blair Handbook of Insouciant Narcissism and suggested that this influx of humanity was a tribute to his dazzling stewardship of a booming economy. But of course. It’s obvious. Immigration is how the world says thank you to God for giving us David Cameron.
Some reckon these ploys degrade Parliament. Paul Flynn (whose side-job as a Gandalf impersonator has yet to appear on the register of members’ interests) stood up at the end to ‘make a point of order’, i.e. throw an insult. He claimed that the devious swindle he’d just witnessed was one of the worst on record. He demanded that Cameron attend a corrective seminar where the words ‘question’ and ‘answer’ be explained to him. If not, he said, abolish PMQs. It ‘brings the house into disrepute.’
Whoa! Stop right there, Gandalf. PMQs doesn’t bring the house into disrepute. It brings the PM into disrepute. And in the best way possible. By revealing his methods and his nature. His squirming and wriggling under fire are plain for all to see. Viewers at home watch in horrified wonder at his polished shamelessness. He doesn’t blush. He doesn’t fret or hesitate. Up he gets in his nicely tailored suit and leans sideways on the despatch box and then tosses up his chin like the club bore about to repeat an absolute snorter of a yarn. And he gives his answer. Which is an answer to a question he’s just invented.
What ‘brings the house into disrepute’ is the impotence of the executive. We heard today of two vital issues ensnared in bureaucracy.
In Plymouth, 1000 jobs are imperilled by the MoD’s reluctance to transfer disused land to the council. The MP begged the PM to beg the Secretary of State to get these acres shifted pronto. Cameron said he was ‘pressing the Ministry’. He didn’t sound too confident.
Ditto a new law to protect toddlers from choking to death at kindergartens. Could the PM use his influence to do something?
Again, Cam seemed entirely detached from the decision-making process.
What’s the point of Parliament if jobs vanish and babies die while they footle and dither?
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