Was this the day Ed Miliband lost the election?
Only two PMQs remain before polling day and the Labour leader used all six questions to ask David Cameron one thing: when might he ask him more questions? Nothing on policy. Nothing on convictions. Just questions about questions.
He meant questions outside the House, of course. On telly. That’s the difference, according to Labour. A televised head-to-head debate is nothing like parliament.
Except that PMQs is a televised head-to-head debate.
To quiz the PM about quizzing the PM is hardly the tactic of a confident popular leader about to sweep to power.
But Miliband had made a calculation. Previously, Cameron had offered unequivocally to take on the Labour leader at any time. Now he’s changed his mind. So Miliband can portray Cameron as a scaredy-cat.
At a cost, though. And he paid that in full today. Cameron detected weakness in Miliband’s line of enquiry and he accused him of conceding defeat already.
He read from a Labour leaflet distributed in Scotland suggesting that Labour’s aim now is to deny the Tories a majority not to win one itself. This means Ed is angling for a non-aggression pact with the SNP.
And we all know what they want. Scrap nukes. Mug toffs. Abort Britain.
So, yes, Miliband gets to call Cameron a scaredy-cat. But Cameron gets to call Miliband a pacifist sly-boots, a back-room dealer, a Quisling, a white flag-waver and a Britain-hater. Quite a good day’s work.
That should worry Ed. As should Cameron’s description of Miliband’s first morning at Number 10.
‘Crawling into Downing St on Alex Salmond’s coattails.’
Cameron repeated ‘crawling into Downing Street’ three times which suggests that Tory wordsmiths have spent many hours selecting a phrase with a particular flavour: low, servile, faintly verminous, a little Gothic and theatrical too. Almost operatic.
That’ll cause Ed problems. It’ll get on the news. And stick in people’s minds. They’ll start to ask if they’re ready to be governed by such an unstable and opportunistic alliance. Labour’s wealth-allergic tax-junkies in cahoots with the SNP’s Anglophobic peace-niks. They don’t even like each other under normal playing conditions. Mutual detestation is what keeps them going.
Labour’s backbenches should worry Ed too. The ‘Food Bank Britain’ motif which supplied them with so much querulous indignation over the last five years has been quietly dropped.
Lisa Nandy gave it one last bash today and invited Cameron to congratulate a Wigan charity that prevents hard-up pensioners from dying of malnutrition. Emergency supplies of Heinz soup are dropped onto bowling greens from the doors of thundering Chinooks. Armed convoys full of Mr Kipling pies pull up outside bingo halls and are mobbed by starving punters.
In the old days, Cameron reddened and squirmed when Food Bank Britain came up. Now he just reads out the employment statistics in the local area. And in Nandy’s constituency they show a job-market close to over-heating.
Food Bank Britain is finished. That should worry Ed.
Is Ed finished? That shouldn’t worry anyone. Except Mrs Ed.
Comments