UPDATE: Anyone dropping in here from the BBC’s liveblog of PMQs, hello and welcome, but please go here instead. You will immediately notice what the hard-pressed Beeb livebloggers did not – that this post is last week’s PMQs report.
Even more shouty plonkerism than usual at PMQs today if such is possible, perhaps partly because Brown and Cameron were reasonably evenly matched. Clegg was heard with comparative quiet for once – it has occurred to me before that a bad day for Cameron often seems to coincide with a good day for Clegg. Perhaps it’s a function of psychology, that if Cameron hasn’t provided particularly effective opposition, Clegg feels more able to.
He asked how the government intended to force the banks to make good on the things they promised in return for recapitalisation – an end to the bonus culture, and increased lending to small businesses. All MPs, Clegg said, knew that small businesses in their constituencies were “receiving emails from their banks that virtually closed them down overnight”. The Prime Minister, to my great surprise, did not once mention Winter Fuel Payments in his answer. He referred to various existing government schemes for funding small businesses, confirming the now total merging of state and private sector in the collective hive mind of Labour.
Clegg’s second question was a reiteration of the first, but I think put the case more effectively with a reference to Brown’s “strutting” on the world stage of the G20 meeting, showing off his plan – which at home simply wasn’t working. If the Prime Minister would not force banks to lend to small businesses, would he at least set up a new commercial bank to lend businesses money directly – a reference to the “government bank” proposal that received some press this morning. Brown simply reiterated that his plan was working. No real change in the answer, except that Brown referred to the fact that Barclays had elected not to pay board bonuses (something which I gather was whispered to him on the front bench while Clegg was asking his second question) – a disingenuous point since Clegg wasn’t asking about just board bonuses.
This was what I would call a safe PMQs for Clegg. He didn’t tackle the tax issue in the bullish way James Graham suggested, and in fact refrained from tackling it at all. In starting a groove on any other issue of a similar depth to the one he has developed on tax cuts, he is hampered by the two question constraint. At least two questions on the same subject week after week can be slowly forged into a narrative – and the challenge is then to control it.
But when Clegg starts a new pet topic, Brown can get away with essentially providing the same answer to both questions, in a way that he can’t quite get away with providing the same answer to six questions from Cameron. I understand why Clegg sticks closely to one theme for both questions – he’s going for impact rather than scattergun – but even so it takes us a hellishly long time to get anywhere near a good PMQs narrative with two questions a week.
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