Ed Miliband had an unusually deep voice at Prime Minister’s Questions today. I don’t know whether he had a cold, or perhaps he’d been gargling with liquid chocolate on the advice of his spin doctors. But it sounded as though he could do a passable Barry White voiceover. He started in a very subdued way about “Friends of Yemen” and I was expecting the Speaker to turn down the lights and play “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More” in the background.
Ed Miliband’s main point was about a breakage of trust based on tuition fees. He talked about anger in “Sheffield, Twickenham and Eastleigh” over the betrayal of solemn promises made to vote against increases in tuition fees. A good point – which is difficult, if not impossible, to answer.
These days, Ed Miliband is getting a lot of advice on how to deal with Prime Minister’s Questions. A leaked memo advised him to “get to your feet looking as though you are seizing on something new”, and to ensure that he has a “cheer line” so his speech can be “clipped by the broadcasters”.
David Cameron, of course, reminded Ed Miliband of this advice today. But the best advice came in the form of an example of excellent questioning by Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester.
In the last question today, Bob referred to the “fun and games” that …
Unlike last week, when it took me several days to work it out, I could work out what Ed Miliband was trying to do at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Though she is happily on the road to recovery in hospital, the Labour leader skilfully raised the political spectre of Maggie T.
Miliband started by quoting the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, about the risk of a “double dip recession”. He asked the PM if Clarke was right – “yes or no?” (which is rapidly turning into Miliband-E’s catchphrase). Cameron very effectively batted that one away by asking Miliband to read out the whole quote from Clarke, which makes clear he was talking about a world recession.
For a moment, it was as if the bottom had fallen out of Miliband’s world just after Cameron had accused him of not having “bottom”). A bit like Enfield and Whitehouse’s characters on Dragon’s Den when one of the dragons asks them a simple but devastating question like “Who is going to buy your pussy cruncher when everyone likes pussies?” and then there is a terrified silence while the two pussy cruncher salesmen start involuntarily pouring perspiration from beneath their armpits. They don’t have an answer.
Well, the only answer Miliband had for Cameron was to ask the same question again. He needed time to think.
Ed Miliband made a reasonably good start at Prime Minister’s questions today. However, ultimately he failed to score a substantive point against David Cameron. Indeed, Ed Miliband painted himself into a corner. He is now basically defending the retention of child benefit for the top 15% earners in the country. Since Osborne’s breakfast announcement of the child benefit changes, up until now, Labour have avoided this stance.
Miliband started his questioning today focusing on the unfairness for families with one earner over £43K losing child benefit against families with two earners of £40K keeping their child benefit. However, he lost this …
Due to the sad and sudden illness of David Cameron’s father, Prime Minister’s Questions had an unexpected, almost surreal, feel to them. Instead of Cameron v Harman it was back to where we were on 21st July: Clegg v Straw.
Adding to the sombre mode, Nick Clegg read out a list of no less than a dozen servicemen who have been killed over the summer, plus a doctor and a policeman who have also perished in the war zone.
The Speaker asked for “pithy” responses from the front bench. This surely could not have been a reference to the Deputy Prime …
It can be surprisingly easy to excite some journalists. Today is a case in point. Nick Clegg stood in for David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions. During his exchanges with Jack Straw (who was standing in for Labour’s Harriet Harman), the Deputy Prime Minister referred to the invasion of Iraq as “illegal”.
To most people watching this is not a surprise. The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Iraq war, which was supported by both Labour and the Tories, is pretty well-documented, I think it’s fair to say. The fact that the Lib Dems and Conservatives have reached a coalition agreement does not alter the past, nor does it alter politicians’ individual views. Why should it?
And yet the response from some journalists has been to label this a “gaffe” – a term otherwise known as a politician saying something he believes which a journalist hopes to be able to spin into a story.
Indeed, it’s interesting to see how a story like this can develop.
Were the Lib Dems right to tweet earlier today that Nick Clegg would taoday become “the first Liberal leader since 1922 to lead PMQs”? That’s the question that’s been raging today.
My LDV Co-Editor Mark Pack believes he has the definitive answer, and has blogged it in his professional capacity here.
His conclusion: “strictly speaking Nick Clegg won’t be the first Liberal (Democrat) leader since 1922 to answer Prime Minster questions.” He is, however, the first Liberal to answer questions in place of the Prime Minister since 1922.
Dr Pack has spoken; surely there can be nothing left to add?
An energetic Nick Clegg took Prime Minister’s Questions today. Notice how casually I said that. Only the first Liberal/LibDem leader to take questions (acting) as PM since Lloyd George in the 1920s. Pretty blooming historic, that.
If that was not enough, our cup ran well and truly over with yet another first and, perhaps, unique occasion. Jack Straw at the dispatch box pretending to be Labour leader! Clegg stood in for Cameron because the latter was in the USA. Straw stood in for Harman because she was in Peckham.
Jack Straw probably does bellowing quite well when he hasn’t got a sore …
There’s been discussion this morning – sparked by a tweet from Labour blogger Hopi Sen – about whether Lloyd George was indeed the last Liberal to face Prime Minister’s Questions.
Hopi questioned the Lib Dem claim that Nick Clegg, when he stands in for David Cameron today, will be the first Liberal leader since 1922 to lead PMQs – he commented:
Asquith last Liberal _leader_ to take Qs. Also PMQ’s began in ’61 so no-one did em in 22.
The Lib Dem press office have been quick to refute Hopi’s suggestion that the party is ignorant of its own history, …
Once again, Harriet Harman eluded the predictions of such luminaries as the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue and alighted on the unexpected subject of cancer waiting times.
This strikes me as an excellent subject for Harman to choose. Labour introduced a “guarantee” for cancer patients to see a specialist within two weeks of seeing their GP. Most of us know someone who has had cancer and know that the first few weeks of doubt and fear are appallingly traumatic. The two week guarantee is a very “real” target which means a great deal to worried patients and their relatives.
You never know in which direction Harriett Harman is going to pounce at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Take today. Veteran commentators, such as John Pienaar, prior to the session, were unable to predict the two topics she eventually alighted on. She’s got her own patented self-loading googly device which fires her off in any direction, leaving bystanders gasping.
Today she even did that thing one would never predict in the House of Commons. She started with a topic which brought only warm, mushy agreement with the Prime Minister – on domestic violence and the need to retain short sentences in those cases. …
Well I must say, there was some dazzling stuff at Prime Minister’s questions today. But for those who might have expected some light, rather than heat, to emerge; there was disappointment. The score was 5-5 in footballing terms. A dazzling draw.
Harriet Harman’s display of debating skill was particularly stunning today. Her point was very simple and powerful. 1.3 million jobs will be lost as a result of government budget cuts, says a report this morning.
David Cameron didn’t deny this estimate came out of the treasury or say that he would publish what Harman called these “hidden treasury documents”. He did …
Prime Minister’s Questions started to get back to normal today. A question is asked and there is a bellow – not an answer – in reply. But sometimes it is a question of “ask a silly question – get a silly answer”. Take Harriet Harman’s opening sally: “Could the Prime Minister tell us how much has been set aside to relink pensions to earnings in 2011?” After Cameron spoke about the “triple lock” (we LibDems thought of that phrase first) on pension rises, Harman replied that the government haven’t set aside a single penny for the promise. What a remarkable …
Prime Minister’s Questions is definitely becoming more subdued these days. The bellowing and ya-boo atmosphere has reduced by about 80% since the election. The Cumbrian shootings have dominated both sessions so far, which has added to the quietish feeling.
Harriet Harman has suddenly developed an interest in the electoral roll and the fact that “3.5 million people” who could be on it, aren’t. Fascinating. She seems to have suddenly come up with this as a reason to throw a sort of police “stinger” in front of voting reform – or at least constituency boundary re-drawing. She seems to have forgotten that her party was in power for thirteen years. Why didn’t they do something about electoral registration then? And, as David Cameron retorted, the last election was fought on recently redrawn boundaries anyway – which rather kiboshed Hattie’s argument.
Harman then had a go about CCTV. David Cameron went off on one, ending up about rights to enter people’s houses. He did make some good points about civil liberties during which Nick Clegg nodded very strongly. Harman raised an estate on her patch where they want CCTV coverage. Cameron said it was all about proportionality. If only he could say that about voting reform.
I feel as though Norris McWhirter (late of the Guinness Book of Records) ought to have been kneeling at the foot of the Speaker’s Chair with his stopwatch for this momentous Prime Minister’s Questions. There were several records or firsts being set. The first coalition PMQs ever, I would suggest (I doubt whether Winnie or Ramsay or our David held such events). The first with Liberal Democrats on the government benches. The first with a party sporting its second female leader (Margaret Beckett was acting Labour leader after John Smith died). And it’s 13 long years since we had …
Even before it started, one was expecting a 9-9 score-draw – you know the sort of thing, arguments posited which pass each like ships in the night at a distance of one full nautical mile, angrily blasting their fog-horns at each other but not actually coming close enough for any meaningful interchange via Aldis lamp or semaphore.
Also, before it started, a guess as to the first question from Cameron? Could it just be on National insurance perchance?
A friendly Labour MP spiked the guns of Cameron by asking about the “£6 billion gap” first of all. So Brown could fire off …
It’s nine days since Nick Clegg challenged Gordon Brown to volunteer to appear before Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq war this side of the general election “before people decide how to vote on his record in government?” And now it seems that Nick’s pressure has paid off – the BBC reports:
Gordon Brown will give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry before the general election, the BBC understands.
Mr Brown, who has said he is “happy” to face the inquiry whenever called, had been under pressure to do so before the election, which must be held by June.
The inquiry’s chairman is expected to confirm later that the PM will be asked to appear but will not set a date. However, the BBC understands he will appear in late February or early March.
You can re-live the exchange between Nick and Mr Brown, either on video courtesy the BBC or via the Hansard transcript, here on LDV.
Nick has welcomed the Prime Minister’s decision to face the Chilcot Inquiry:
It is well known that the Prime Minister was a key figure in Britain’s decision to invade Iraq. It is only right that Gordon Brown should explain his role in this disastrous foreign policy failure before asking the British people for their vote.”
This is an excellent result for Nick. Good in its own right: the Prime Minister should be asked about his role in the invasion of Iraq. And good for Nick’s growing stature as leader: once again, as over the Gurkhas and Michael Martin, it is Nick who is making the running, and punching above his weight at Prime Minister’s Questions.
This in stark contrast to David Cameron, whose string of lacklustre Commons’ performances are beginning to be noticed even by his friends at The Spectator. Here’s how the magazine’s Coffee House blog compared the performances of Nick and the Tory leader at this week’s PMQs:
The LibDem leader took a pop at Labour with a very smart weapon. He wondered why the government hadn’t acted to stop RBS lending tax-payers’ money to Kraft which is about to sack Cadburys staff. That’s three bogymen in one. … hate him because they can see he’s capable, plucky and politically shrewd. The house has strange ways of honouring talent. …
Cameron risks turning into the Rafa Benitez of Westminster. He’s living on a reputation which is rapidly fading from memory.
US firm Kraft’s proposed takeover of Cadbury’s has made headlines in recent days. First, because it’s a major, historic British brand being snapped-up by a non-UK business (or ‘foreign predator’, as Vince Cable labels them). Secondly, because of the fear that job losses will result. And, thirdly, because of the role of the Royal Bank of Scotland – in which the British government has a majority stake-holding – in lending the money to Kraft which will fund its acquisition of Cadbury’s.
The Lib Dems – in the shape of Nick Clegg and Vince – have sharply questioned the role of the Government in the takeover. At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Nick asked Gordon Brown:
… there is a simple principle at stake. Tens of thousands of British companies are crying out for that money to protect jobs, and instead RBS wants to lend it to a multinational with a record of cutting jobs. When British taxpayers bailed out the banks, they would never have believed that their money would be used to put British people out of work. Is that not just plain wrong?
Nick Clegg pressed Gordon Brown to volunteer to appear before Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq war this side of the general election “before people decide how to vote on his record in government?” The Prime Minister replied that it wasn’t a matter for him. (Odd how when you become the most powerful person in Britain, you seem to lose the power to volunteer to do something inconvenient).
So Nick asked again, telling the Prime Minister he “should insist on going to the inquiry now”, and asking “What has he got to hide?” Again Mr Brown said, “Sorry, guv, more than my job’s worth” (or words to that effect).
Nick still wasn’t happy, so has now written to the Prime Minister, chalenging him to do the decent thing:
Dear Gordon,
I am writing to urge you to indicate immediately to Sir John Chilcot that it is your strong preference to go before the Iraq Inquiry ahead of the General Election.
Following developments yesterday at Alastair Campbell’s hearing, your personal role in the decisions that led to the war in Iraq has now come under the spotlight. The notion that your hearing should take place after the election in order that the Inquiry remains outside of party politics therefore no longer holds. On the contrary, the sense that you have been granted special treatment because of your position as Prime Minister will only serve to undermine the perceived independence of the Committee.
As I said to you across the floor of the Commons today, people have a right to know the truth about the part you played in this war before they cast their verdict o n your Government’s record. I urge you to confirm publicly that should Sir John Chilcot invite you to give evidence to the Inquiry ahead of the election you will agree to do so.
Nick Clegg
Well, I don’t suppose Mr Brown will change his mind – but Nick has at least exposed the Prime Minister’s relief-cum-satisfaction that he can dodge the Chilcot bullet, dominating the main political headlines as a result. And by the time Mr Brown does eventually appear he will be a genuinely powerless ex-Prime Minister so who’ll care what he has to say any longer?
Meanwhile David Cameron asked some windy, unfocused and instantly forgettable questions of the Prime Minister who gave at least as good as he got. Score-draw for theatrics; no-score draw for content.
Here’s Nick’s questions, courtesy the BBC. The Hansard transcript’s below it.
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 16th December 2009 - 6:35 pm
Forgive me if I tread carefully here, for while the Lib Dem deputy leader is protected by the cloak of Parliamentary privilege your humble scribe has no wish to tangle with a billionaire. So I’ll let The Times tell the story of today’s (Deputy) Prime Minister’s Questions:
A senior Liberal Democrat today referred to Lord Ashcroft, the Tory deputy chairman, as a “non-dom” in the Commons. It is the first time the Conservative peer, whose tax status is unknown, has been described in a such a way on the floor of the House.
There’s no doubt today’s PMQs belonged to Gordon Brown. It’s not necessarily that he answered the questions any better than usual – that seems to be an acknowledged superfluity for the Prime Minister – but his performance was miles more energetic and confident than usual.
Mr Brown was also helped by an over-defensive David Cameron, who seemed to have no quips prepared for the inevitable assaults by the Prime Minister on the Tories’ tax cuts for millionaires, and the tax-avoiding non-dom status of Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith. Especially effective were the Prime Minister’s withering put-downs – “The more he talks, …
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 25th November 2009 - 9:05 pm
Ah, the joy of PMQs – Nick asks Gordon a question, Gordon fails to answer a totally different question to the one Nick asks. It’s a regular pattern, but today it was clear to everyone that the Lib Dem leader had floored the Prime Minister over the issue of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
Nick laid the trap neatly, asking the simple and straightforward question:
It is vital that the Iraq inquiry, which started its work this week, is able to reveal the full truth about the decisions leading up to the
Y’know I’ve expressed my general contempt for the pantomime which passes for Prime Minister’s Questions on many occasions: it’s theatre, mirage, insubstantial: all performance, no content. But we discovered today there’s something worse than the usual rowdy PMQs: when there’s both no performance and no content.
It’s hard to remember that William Hague once had a fearsome Commons reputation for being the best, sparkiest, wittiest debater on the block. Perhaps all those after-dinner speeches have dulled his senses – or perhaps he reckons he’s not paid enough to waste all his best lines on Parliament – but today’s performance against Prime Ministerial stand-in Harriet Harman was lame and dull. To put it in context, he made Harriet look actually quite good. She wasn’t – she was anodyne and frequently out-of-her-depth – but the comparison was to her credit, not his. Still, at least Mr Hague was better than Gordon Brown.
Vince Cable rose, as is traditional, to cheers from all-corners of the house. He started with a dry, slightly obscure, joke in Harriet’s honour – “may I express the hope that when she was briefing the Prime Minister for talks with his friend Signor Berlusconi, she remembered to enclose an Italian translation of her progressive views on gender equality?” – but then stuck to the touchstone issue among the public at the moment: how can government ministers talk of the need for public sector pay restraint when they are signing-off large bonuses for executives in banks currently majority-owned by the public? Harriet made a half-heartedly fierce show of sounding tough while committing the Government to nothing.
In a low-scoring contest, Vince edges it both for injecting (a little) humour into proceedings, and (more importantly) for asking a question that matters to the public, on an issue the government can do something about, and where his own party has something distinctive to say. Mr Hague, take note.
Full Hansard transcript of Vince and Harriet’s exchanges follow:
Apologies, dear reader, but I’ve been busy at work rather than watching Prime Minister’s Questions (so that you don’t have to). I will catch up with it later, but I have read the Hansard transcript. And if today’s PMQs is remembered for anything, I suspect it will be for this quite sublime Prime Ministerial line:
… total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013–14.
Yes, you read that right: 0% counts as a rise in total spending in Gordon Brown’s eyes. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh (admittedly not a Labour cheerleader) sums up his performance today:
It was worse than that: it was bad in an inept, jaded, so-grey-I-make-John-Major-look-colourful kinda way. This was a man with the stench of decay around him.
Don’t forget that the economy and figures are supposed to be Brown’s strong suit. If he turns in a performance like this, it suggests that the only real reason for keeping him – namely a possible economic recovery for which he will claim credit – is disappearing fast.
If I were a Labour backbencher watching today, I would have my head in my hands.
That’s certainly how it read.
When Nick Clegg’s turn came, he also asked about public spending, linking the issue (in his supplementary) to his newly-adopted policy of scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system. It was in his first question, though, that I think Nick did best, skewering the tortured efforts of both the Labour and Tory parties to avoid levelling with the British public how they will respond to the economics of recession. Full Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges with Gordon follow:
We open with tributes to the Speaker from Brown and Cameron, and a planted question on the government’s forthcoming Gurkhas statement. The House listens in faintly disgusted silence to Gordon Brown making a virtue of the fact that he had to be made to do something.
We follow with tussling between Brown and Cameron over whether or not a General Election would cause chaos. Cameron trying to persuade us that an election would mean “addressing the issues” and “a fresh start” – see Costigan Quist’s post on this subject this morning, if you haven’t already. Brown’s
A red-faced and relatively subdued PMQs today all round.
Cameron performed with some sincerity, suggesting that people would not accept paybacks in the short term and rule changes in the long term – political leadership was required to effect immediate changes to the rules. No-one doubted that the rules were inadequate. Unusually, however, I think Brown had the logical upperhand on this one. It is precisely because MPs have proven themselves not capable of keeping to the spirit of the rules that they have forgone any right to effect arbitrary changes to the expenses system. It’s not
Some real desperate farce from the House this afternoon. Brown’s answers to Cameron were incredibly poor throughout – “I’m sure that sounded great in the bunker” Cameron said after one particularly otherworldly response. As a further indicator of the standard on the government side, planted questions enable the PM to mention the National Minimum Wage and football, and several involved waving the scary “before 1997” card.
A sneering question comes from a Tory backbencher about bullying in the workplace (vis, Number 10) referring to reports of “a Whitehall official” throwing office equipment around. Gordon even manages to
As I type, the Lib Dems are holding the Government to account on their stance on rights for Ghurka troops to settle in the UK.
But in PMQs this afternoon, Clegg launched a blistering attack on the Prime Minister on the Ghurka issue, despite following Cameron’s similar question.
And he’s been rewarded for his efforts with a round of ace reviews from bloggers across the spectrum:
But it was Clegg who played the real blinder. This was the Lib Dem leader’s best performance at PMQs. Clegg has struggled to find the right issue to get the PM on,
I must apologise, must I not. I spent any spare moment yesterday glued to the #g20 Twitter stream, which says much in itself, not only about my indolence but about the relevance of PMQs to the concerns of the outside world.
It’s the nature of the beast with the G20, I think. It’s hard enough for journalists and commentators with thousands of words at their disposal to say anything meaningful about such a complex, open-ended and uncertain set of negotiations. A half-hour clutch of stage-managed questions and answers frequently interrupted by partisan honking stands no chance.
But before the G20 came up, Cameron opened on the question of the MPs expenses review and, unusually, made himself look like a bit of a tit by demanding a meeting between the three main party leaders. Twice. The second time after Brown had already agreed to one. Brown enjoyed a rare moment of fun with that. Cameron doesn’t often walk into traps that facile, and it makes one realise how much he relies on Brown’s dreadful slowness in debate.
Simon R @Mick: I wondered if you'd reply, given your PhD :-) Yes, that's great, and that means you're in a good position to question standard economic assumptions, and...
Simon R @Joe: I don't think it's at all hypocritical to support Ukraine's right to sovereignty while also not being opposed to attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities.
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Mick Taylor @SimonR. I do have a PhD in economics and peer reviewed published papers and I do challenge the whole orthodox approach to economics practised par excellence by...
Andy Daer @Hina, you might not have got the responses your expected, but I hope you will take heart from those of us who think racism is on the retreat n this country. T...
Simon R @Steve: Ah, so you want to challenge the whole academic discipline of economics, and all the couple of hundred years of research by many thousands of people tha...
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