‘Put that on your leaflets,’ snarled Cameron at PMQs. Inwardly he was gloating. Labour voted against Tory welfare reforms last night so the PM was able to boast that Labour is fighting the new living wage.
Some say Cameron is lurching to the left with his Five Year Plans and his state-controlled pay rises. The same applies to law and order. He’s getting a pinkish tinge. Philip Davies asked him to review the regulations governing early release for serious offenders. Cameron said he’d give it a go. It’s not good enough, he seemed to imply, having murderers murdering people shortly after gaining their freedom by promising to become pillars of the community. But he didn’t seem too bothered by it. Then he made some astonishing disclosures about open prisons. It appears that these places are like being invited to the Royal Opera House to see Parsifal. You can pop in and out as you please. Or take it in easy stages if you like. Some lags have absconded and been ferried straight back to the hotel they just checked out of. But only ‘in exceptional cases,’ said Cameron. What did they leave for? To vote?
Another leftward lurch came when he spoke about Greece’s famous overdraft. Cameron casually mentioned ‘debt relief’ as an option for the future. The best known supporters of debt relief are Gordon Brown and his chief economist, Bob Geldof, who admired its dramatic simplicity. They also liked the fact that a write-off is the opposite of a bail-out. A bail-out hits the poor tax-payer. Debt relief hits the rich banker.
Angus Robertson hasn’t been wasting his long summer evenings. Poring over statements from the Department of Work and Pensions he stumbled on a knotty issue with the ‘third child’ rule on family tax credit. He unpicked the threads and wrapped them around the PM’s neck. It seems that mothers whose third child is the result of a sexual assault must prove the circumstances surrounding its conception before claiming an exemption. The totals won’t be large. Few raped women become pregnant. Few of those who are pregnant go on to bear the child. And an even tinier number would choose to rear it alongside its half-siblings rather than surrendering it for adoption. All the same the Robertson noose, pulled tight enough, will make the PM struggle for breath. It exposes him to the charge that he deepens the anguish of rape victims.
Michael Meacher has been busy as well, ferreting through piles of statistics and figures. He produced a series of percentages designed to give the recovery a good kicking. These included the news that British investment, as a proportion of GDP, is among the lowest in the world. He wanted to know who’s to blame.
‘Ask Gordon,’ said the PM.
As the session wound up it seemed the Speaker had taken an unusual vow of silence. Were we really to be spared one of his under-appreciated quips? No, we weren’t. It arrived in the closing minutes. To warm himself up Mr Bercow began shouting with rustic volubility at some obscure source of noise.
‘Mr Macdonald!’ he yelled with a smirk. ‘Take some sort of soothing medicament!’
The human race divides into admirers and critics of the Speaker’s jokes. Admirers include the Speaker. Critics include the world minus the Speaker. Come to think of it the world minus the Speaker wouldn’t be a bad idea.
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