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.
But David Cameron tried with an equally reasonable point: The last Labour government commissioned the Browne Report, which the coalition government is implementing, more or less. Cameron also threw in a quote from Lord Mandelson, the minister involved in the commission, saying “Browne is essentially right”.
Cameron asked Miliband: “Why not join the consensus instead of joining political opportunism?”
Ed Miliband replied, predictably, with his now-established catchphrase: “I ask the questions”. Then he slipped in the fact that Cameron’s personal photographer has gone onto the civil service payroll. Then he made a joke which was so weak and long that I can’t even be bothered to write it out. “Is it a wise judgment to put his personal photographer on the civil service payroll?” he asked.
-A tricky one for Cameron to answer, that. He went on the broad attack, saying that the coalition government is cutting 2/3rds of the government communications budget “including less on replacing mobile phones in Downing Street” (the later quip was as weak as Miliband’s so apologies for writing it out – it was shorter). “Why not engage in the issues?” asked Cameron.
Miliband replied saying the government is one of broken promises which is “day by day destroying trust”.
Cameron ended by saying ‘We all know what he’s against, but everyone is beginning to ask: “What is he for?”
Miliband didn’t have an allotted reply to that question. But if he did, I am fairly confident he would have said – all together now: “I ASK THE QUESTIONS”.
Other snippets were:
No less than three – yes three – Liberal Democrat MPs asked questions:
-The Educational Maintenace Allowance was the subject of two questions
-For the third time, Labour MPs asked about tax breaks for computer games manufacturers
-Julie Hilling (Labour) asked again about Cameron’s photographer but this time added an adjective which will no doubt turn up in Labour leaflets. She called him “The Prime Minister’s personal vanity photographer.”
-David Cameron made an excellent point about housing benefit, quoting from the last Labour manifesto: “Housing benefit will be reformed to ensure we do not subsidise people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary families could not afford”. Cameron added: “The level of opportunism is so great that even when we introduce their own policies they oppose them”. That had quite a powerful punch to it.
-Hazel Blears (Labour) raised the dreadful gas explosion incident in Salford and asked that special funding be made available to help the families impacted. The House thought she was milking it a bit, which was probably true but also unfair.
-Sam Gyimah (Conservative) asked what I think was his first PMQs question, concerning small businesses.
-A Labour MP, who I think was Lindsay Hoyle, asked the PM what he thought his biggest mistake as PM has been. A bit of a funny question, that.
-Steve McCabe asked if the PM realized that prisoners may be able to elect the new police and crime commissioners. Very good question. David Cameron replied to another question on the same subject saying that “It makes me physically ill to even contemplate giving the vote to prisoners” but emphasized that it had to be done to save spending £160 million. Given the strength of Cameron’s language, I should imagine he’s getting a fair amount of gyp from his backbenchers on this one.
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5 Comments
Well the Labour party are experts on betrayl so at least Ed gives advice from personal experience.
You omitted to mention David Cameron announced the government will be taking measures to restrict the free movement of toner cartridges….. and that toner cartridges will no longer be transported as air freight from the Middle East. Personally, I think it is unfair that toner cartridges are being singled out in this way.
On the more serious matter of, “I ask the questions.” This keeps cropping up because David Cameron continues to avoid answering questions. Instead he responds by asking a question. There is no provision for opposition leaders to set out their own party’s policies at PMQs and if they attempted to do so the Speaker would quickly intervene. There ought to be more time allowed for different opposition figures to ask questions of the PM. Issues such as the continuing and senseless war going in Afghanistan might then get raised. It doesn’t happen because there is complicity amongst all three parties on the Afghan war. Someone needs to tell it like it really is – the war has been lost, continuing it is futile and we’re only maintaining hostilities to save losing face!
Paul, you seem to have a problem with Ed Millaband answering with ‘i ask the questions’ but hes right . He does ask the questions and Camerons inability to answer simple questions such as, whether he thinks its appropriate to employ his own photographer, at the same time as we are all facing cuts, says a lot more about Camerons credibility when he says we’re all in this together than it does Ed Millaband, when he simply points out the PMQ’S means he gets asked the questions, not that he can evade answering by asking a question himself.
The biggest problem with pieces like this is most of us spot what seems to be the desperate bleating of the ‘yes but no but’ brigade.
No matter how much distraction is thrown up in clouds of ‘labour said,Milliband said, Blair did , Brown said’…it remains irrelevant.
Most of us were appalled by the NewLabour betrayal that occurred over their years in office. That betrayal was the root cause of votes shifting from Labour. No amount of verbage will disguise the fact we saw far greater betrayal , of promises, pledges , and manifestos, from the LDP – and all it took was a few days in May.
You know I mistyped LSD for LDP there. I should have left it as what I see in westminster is surely some sad hallucination based on the demise of LDP politics.
I would have said LDP ethics and morality , but that really would have been too silly.
You see , no matter how silly Milliband might be made to seem, no matter how self-contradictory opposition speakers may sound, no matter how much labour may contradict one another and their past outpourings,
we need to see Clegg and co’ demonstrate that they haven’t actually opened a bordello in the Palace of Westminster , then eagerly scrambled to staff it with willing LDP parliamentarians..
The labour party has a history most of their voters could accept except for the last few years of newlabour duplicity and tory policies.
The LDP has held a few months of vague and feeble power in decades.
The net result is a total credibility melt-down.
Labour lost because their policies too closely resembled , soft ,, right of centre Tory policy
Hello Lib Dems…
That’s a clue,
a huge one.
Never mind Milliband and Co”…
Let’s see some shred of credibility from the parliamentary LDP before they dare even contemplate the faults or sins of others.
So far , all I have seen is an LDP parliamentary group intent on turning me back into a labour voter who will never again believe a word an LDP rep’ utters.
And I am not alone. Anyone thinking that LDP asupport is not heading ‘leftwards’ in droves is kidding themselves.
The ‘I ask the questions’ line is a bit of a red herring, if you ask me.
Basically it’s Ed Miliband trying to assert himself without having a substantial point to back it up – all he’s got is the contrast with Cameron’s period as leader of the opposition when he repeatedly accused Gordon Brown of not answering questions.
…perhaps he’s lining up a classic ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attack.
All the same the way he came across was incredibly arrogant. Ed Miliband is Labour’s William Hague, so if he really is as smart as he is reputed he’ll be plotting his way out of the leadership within a couple of years.