Pmqs

Chooom! Davies has arrived. Sir Howard’s report made a text-book landing on the PM’s desk yesterday afternoon and began taxiing towards Cameron’s in-tray. But the PM hasn’t read it yet. Or so he claimed at PMQs. He therefore avoided any commitment to building a third runway at Heathrow. And his excuse? Wilful ignorance. Seriously? He hasn’t read it? Given the time and cash the damn thing has gobbled up he might have glanced at the executive summary. Sir Howard has worked his way through twenty million smackers reaching a foregone conclusion. His defenders point out that this money was very well spent because Sir Howard pays scrupulous personal attention to every

Harriet Harman began at PMQs by asking about the situation in Tunisia. The mood of the House was appropriately sombre as this issue was discussed and there was much agreement between her and Cameron. But then she turned to the Davies’s report and its recommendation that a third runway should be built at Heathrow, and party politics was resumed. Harman announced that Labour was now backing a third runway, and challenged Cameron to do the same. He dodged, hiding behind the threat of judicial review. Harman then cracked a series of good jokes at his expense, chastising him for ‘being bullied by Boris’ out of doing the right thing for the

Unfortunate timing for ambitious new Tory MP Alan Mak to be turned over by the Times today, after he was on the order paper to ask a prominent question at PMQs. Mr S’s fellow diarist at the Times wrote this morning: ‘Alan Mak (Conservative, Havant) has been an MP for only a month and already his self-promotion is getting up people’s noses. Bad enough to send his maiden speech to everyone in Downing Street, he then baggsed the seat behind David Cameron for last week’s prime minister’s questions and with it a brief TV appearance.’ Now Mr S hears there was a concerted effort today not to let Mak take up his

PMQs was not the normal, partisan slug-fest today. Instead, there were a slew of serious questions on the challenge of Islamic extremism at home and abroad and the migrant crisis. George Osborne, standing in for David Cameron, turned in a solid performance. He seemed unfazed by the occasion. His only misstep was persisting with a pre-scripted joke in response to Hilary Benn’s sombre opening question. But other than that, Osborne’s answers were crisp and politically confident. The themes he chose to emphasise were very Osborne. In response to a Labour question on welfare, he had a British version of Angela Merkel’s warning about how Europe can’t afford not to reform

Harriet Harman has 16 years on David Cameron and she used that advantage very effectively today. After Cameron replied to her first question on the EU referendum with a string of mocking quips about Labour’s mass conversion on the subject, Harman scolded him for gloating and told him to ‘show a bit more class’. This dressing down took Cameron aback. For the rest of the session he wasn’t sure whether to tone it down or mock Harman for complaining. With Harman refusing to play along with the usual Punch and Judy show, Cameron turned to the SNP. He took advantage of Angus Robertson’s questions to mock the Nationalists for saying

The Prime Minister was on boisterous from at PMQs today, welcoming the Labour Party’s new found support for an EU referendum in the division lobbies last night. Cameron described it as ‘the biggest mass conversion since that Chinese general baptised his troops with a hosepipe’. The green benches were left baffled to what on earth he was talking about. Mr S, as ever, can shed some light on the matter. General Feng Yu Xiang was a Chinese warlord, known as the ‘Christian General’, who dominated parts of Northern China in the twenties. Born an illiterate peasant in 1882 he converted to Christianity in 1914. Having conquered Beijing in 1928, Feng

Cameron expected to walk into a firestorm of mockery at PMQs following his retirement bombshell. Quitter. Lame duck. Get yer pipe-‘n’-slippers. But barely an audible jibe was flung from the Labour benches. The Tories on the other hand greeted Ed Miliband with a roar that scared the pigeons in Parliament Square. Miliband and his superwonks had conceived a brilliant plan. Well, brilliant if you’re a superwonk. All available questions would be used to amass a Great Pyramid of Betrayals out of the PM’s broken promises over five years. Pointless really. Strictly for the bubble. No hope of making ‘the Six’. And Cameron wrong-footed Miliband. Asked to promise not to hike

The most remarkable poll of the week was the one which suggested the British public find Ed Miliband more of a toff than David Cameron. It takes something to out-toff an Old Etonian with a patrician air and liking for green wellies. But is it so very surprising? Ed has, after all, just shown himself to be on the friend of wealthy idlers, by hinting that the brunt of tax rises in a Labour government would fall instead on those who work for a living. Ed Miliband began well in the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the election. He noted David Cameron’s direct answer to James Landale’s direction question on his future as