After last week’s pretty subdued start to the new Parliamentary term at Prime Minister’s Questions, there was a return to the more boisterous rough ‘n’ tumble which passes for debate in this farcical weekly charade in the interests of holding the Government publicly to account.
As is well-established, the actual content of PMQs is pretty irrelevant (which is just as well, because it’s pretty non-existent) – for the media and the Westminster village performance is all. And measured by that criterion, I thought all three party leaders could take some pleasure in how they did.
As recession reality begins to hit home, the Government’s response to it was, unsurprisingly, the dominant theme. Gordon Brown tried to slam home two messages: that Labour is doing all it can; and that the Tories would do nothing. And for once he managed to upstage Mr Cameron with a couple of slick, well-delivered one-liners:
The one thing that President Obama did not say in his speech yesterday was, “Fellow Americans, let’s do nothing.”
and, gesturing to Ken Clarke, restored to the Tory front-bench:
has the benefit now of a new shadow shadow Chancellor to help him on his way
Though that did set up Mr Cameron’s best-scripted line of the day: “The difference between this former Chancellor and that former Chancellor is that this one left a golden legacy and that one wrecked it.”
But, for me, the Prime Minister’s most impressive answer was not the rehearsed bon mots, but his graceful acknowledgement that the Government’s recapitalisation of the banks is in trouble, but that it was the best, the only, policy on the table, and it was (eventually) supported (half-heartedly) by the Tories themselves:
I was very grateful for the support that the Opposition party gave to the recapitalisation of the banks three months ago. I suppose that I should not be surprised that the minute there is a difficulty, it withdraws its support from the right proposal. The recapitalisation of the banks was the right thing to do. The right hon. Gentleman has no other policy that would replace that policy.
To my ears, the phraseology sounded very Tony Blair. Why? Because its more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone is just the right way to deflate Mr Cameron’s tendency towards shrill point-scoring. It also has the merit of being the truth, a powerful weapon which Mr Brown all too often neglects.
In his two allotted questions, Nick Clegg pressed two issues – first, that the Government’s response is too ambiguous to work, and secondly that it’s time for full, temporary nationalisation of the weakest banks.
To be honest, I didn’t think this was one of Nick’s best days at PMQs (although generally I think he’s a strong performer there, unfairly maligned by media hacks). To me, his questions seemed a little vague, with no examples to back them up. However, I’ve heard Nick’s sound-bite-ettes used on a number of news programmes this afternoon, while the PMQs questions he asks which I do like seem to sink without trace as far as the media’s concerned. And though I suspect this says at least as much about the poor quality of political reporting as it does about my judgement, I’m happy to concede that, in this instance at least, what matters is what works.
You can catch up with the video of PMQs here via the BBC website, the audio here via the Guardian, or read the Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges below:
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