Loan sharks got a biff on the nose at PMQs today. Cameron wants to cap the sum that each of us can borrow. Ed Miliband was puzzled. This is a U-turn, he said. When he proposed to cap energy bills Cameron called it ‘Marxism.’
Cameron shrugged this off. And he gloatingly invited Miliband to ‘congratulate us’ for pushing through an important reform.
Tricky for Ed. When the government filches your idea, you can’t complain without seeming to oppose your own position.
Miliband moved to the looming winter crisis which he seems to be looking forward to. Last year an additional 31,000 deaths were recorded. All the PM’s fault, apparently.
‘Any excess death is a tragedy,’ said Cameron, appearing to take responsibility for the wipe-out. But he had his own charnel-house to unveil. No fewer than 36,500 corpses had been generated by Ed Miliband, he claimed, when the Labour leader was energy secretary. This was silly. Tussling over policy is one thing. But doing battle with piles of dead pensioners is childish and simplistic. (Then again, perhaps that’s why we’re so keen to watch this fascinating twaddle.)
Miliband had turned up a handy bit of ammo on Twitter. Zac Goldsmith accused the PM of hypocrisy (heaven forbid!) over green taxes: ‘If the PM can casually drop something that was so central to his identity he can drop anything.’ Not that Zac meant this personally, you understand. He was quoting ‘Tory chat’ in the tea-room. Very helpful.
Miliband flung Zac’s delicate back-stab in Cameron’s face. But what caught everyone’s attention was the final phrase.
‘Hashtag “Green Crap”,’ said Miliband.
He actually said that, out loud. ‘Crap’. It was shocking. Merde had been aired in the mother of parliaments. Was democracy itself not under threat? All eyes swivelled towards the Speaker who rarely misses an opportunity to erect himself in public and unleash a short length of quaint Victorian rhetoric. But Mr Chatterbox had lost his tongue. For once, the Chair was mute. Crap had been passed. It seems that a new convention was established at that very moment. MPs are now free to utter ‘crap’ in parliament.
Come to think of it, that’s all they ever do.
Diane Abbott asked about the abolition of ticket offices on the London tube. This has nothing to do with the prime minister. And some interpreted her question as proof that she intends to become mayor of London in 2016.
Ms Abbott will be chuffed that her tactics have been misread. She has no desire to become mayor. Nor has she a hope of winning. She’ll poll well in the angst-ridden ghettos. But in the leafy outer suburbs her pitch will be limited to her stance on education – ‘I sent my kid to public school too.’
Her real intention is to use the campaign to boost her profile and to amplify the fees she can charge to TV discussion shows. It’s not the mayoralty, it’s the moolah.
Tory backbencher Chris Kelly asked about immigration. Labour, he said, had presided over a disaster. One million new arrivals were allowed to scramble under the gates at passport control while customs officers idled around doing crossword puzzles and reading their horoscopes.
Cameron gave us the numbers. Labour predicted that a mere 14,000 Poles would arrive with their spanners and spirit levels. The true figure was 750,000. This was ‘shameful,’ said Cameron.
True, the invasion has changed Britain for ever. All those drains fixed, those boilers serviced, those radiators unblocked. At knockdown rates as well. Our plumbing has never been better.
Is Labour missing a good news story here?
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