Pmqs

If PMQs today was anything to go by, everything is so hunky-dory in Iraq that MPs needn’t discuss it at all. No-one raised it. Afterwards, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was repeatedly asked whether the UK would provide assistance. He said the government’s message focuses on the ‘Iraqi government working with partners in the region, for example the Kurdistan regional government’. Asked to rule out providing military assistance to the country, the spokesman said ‘that’s not on the table’. At the same time, the Prime Minister was finally being asked about Iraq in the Commons as he addressed MPs on the G7 talks. He said:- ‘What we have to deal

Miliband’s approval rating among Tory MPs has never been higher. They roared with joy as he got to his feet today. A foolish grin spread across his face, and his lips revealed a mouth full of showroom-white teeth. Then he began to giggle, which was unnerving. Either he had a deadly weapon up his sleeve. Or he was about to resign. ‘I welcome today’s fall in unemployment,’ he said. The Tory cheers could be heard across the river in Labour’s Lambeth heartland. Miliband has spent the last year on disaster-watch. But the promised calamities have inflicted no damage.  The slump? A memory. Inflation? Becalmed. The NHS? Don’t mention it. The

The Cold War that everyone in Westminster thought would never kick off is well and truly under way. Time was when ministers and advisers imagined that the letters and internal briefing documents detailing the dirty laundry of this government would stay firmly locked in Whitehall desks. But in the past few weeks, the leaks have increased, and they seem to be spreading around the village. Nick Clegg was confronted with the latest on the World at One this afternoon: a document showing that the Cabinet Office has given the Deputy Prime Minister’s favourite free school meals policy a red rating, meaning it is at risk of failing. Clegg tried to

Oh dear, I don’t suppose I’ll get much support in these parts for what follows. But I’m sorta with Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat MP and Business Minister. She has stated that she hates Prime Minister’s Question Time “with a passion” and goes out of her way to avoid attending it. Her implication is that it is “too male”, and I make her right on this too – or, at least, PMQs epitomises the very worst traits of men. It is an objectionable, points-scoring charade of no value or meaning to anyone, simply testosterone-fuelled name-calling and bullying. So well said, Ms Willott. Obviously, the woman’s wrong about almost everything else

Easy triumphs soften victors. Cameron demonstrated this truism today as he took two unexpected blows from Ed Miliband at PMQs. The Labour leader led on his new policy of rent controls. Cameron, rather weakly, seemed amenable to the reform but offered no concrete proposals of his own. Miliband struck. ‘That was a pretty quick U-turn, even for him.’ Miliband then asked about the preparations to surrender AstraZeneca, trussed and bound, to Pfizer – with all the attendant risks to jobs and investment. Cameron flushed as red as a rhubarb crumble and accused Miliband of ‘playing politics’ while the government was ‘getting stuck in’ and defending the national interest. What irked

As the economy bounces back it keeps smacking Ed Miliband in the face. At PMQs today he tried to pose as the people’s champion fighting fat-cat capitalism. He started with Royal Mail, which is now worth a billion more than when it was floated. In hindsight, any privatisation can look like a Westminster mega-blunder or a Square Mile stitch-up. Miliband took the latter view. Referring to the clique of 16 ‘golden ticket’ investors, he asked why these lucky speculators had been allowed to flip their shares for an instant profit while the hard-working posties had been ordered to retain theirs for three years. Cameron spotted the trick. Posties got free

PMQs today was bad for David Cameron, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. No permanent damage was done to him. Ed Miliband did not, to my surprise, come with a set of reforms to the expenses regime that he wanted Cameron to agree to there and then. Instead, he chose to concentrate on what this said about Cameron’s judgment. ‘This is about him’, Miliband thundered. I was, though, surprised not to hear Miliband making more of his usual line that Cameron ‘stands up for the wrong people.’ listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband on Maria Miller’ on Audioboo

Ed Miliband faces a big decision tonight, does he use PMQs tomorrow to call for Maria Miller’s resignation. So far, he has limited himself to saying that Cameron has questions to answer about how this whole business has been handled. But if Miliband went for it at PMQs, it would keep this story going for yet another day. It would also fit Miliband’s argument that Cameron is a Prime Minister who ‘stands up for the wrong people’. Set against this, though, is the question of whether it is in the interests of any party to get into a row over expenses. Tory MPs are quick to point out that five

Cameron, the king of the mood swings, was on typical form today. He veers between calmness and rage with alarming rapidity. The pattern is always the same. He deals reasonably with Miliband’s opening questions but the mercury starts to rise at around Question Four, and his temper reaches straitjacket level on Question Six. He called Ed Miliband and Ed Balls ‘the two muppets’ for mismanaging the Royal Mail while in office. Their bungling cost the exchequer billions, he said. And they didn’t dare privatise the firm for fear of antagonising angry posties and union bosses. Miliband accused Cameron of flogging the company cheap to enrich the Square Mile. At today’s

Last week, if you can remember that far back, World War Three was about to start in Ukraine. The fixture was postponed, thankfully, and politics at Westminster has returned to the usual domestic blood-letting. Both leaders were in chipper mood. Cameron sees everything moving in his direction, including the Labour party which has accepted his benefits cap. Miliband was equally buoyed up. He was grinning and skipping at the despatch box like a boxing kangaroo. The energy giant SSE had just announced a price freeze till 2016. Which is exactly what Miliband prescribed last autumn. So today, at least, he appears to be running the country. Naturally he made the

Tony Benn, the most divisive left-wing figure since the war, united the house today. David Cameron paid tribute to him as an orator, diarist and campaigner. Ed Miliband praised his determination to ‘champion the powerless’ and hold the executive to account. Miliband moved to Crimea. He called Sunday’s plebiscite ‘illegal and illegitimate’. Cameron trumped him with a curious phrase that bolted a bit of punchy modern sloganising onto a fragment of olde Englishe slang. The referendum, he said, had been ‘spatch-cocked together in ten days at the point of a Russian Kalashnikov’. The leaders, both keen to denounce Russia in the most savage terms, swapped promises about travel bans, asset

Hattie Harman tried to crack Clegg today. The deputy prime minister, standing in for David Cameron, explained carefully that his boss was visiting, ‘Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.’ Not a title the Israeli Tourist board has got round to using. Hattie wasn’t on her best form. She tried to draw Clegg as a hypocritical house-slave attempting to duck responsibility for his master’s actions. But she plodded through her jibes. Over-rehearsal had killed her hunger to perform. And Clegg met all her accusations with a simple ploy. Blame Labour. It worked every time. On the bedroom tax Clegg had the support of the figures. A million and a half are