Ming: I would like to do better
Menzies Campbell has admitted he would “like to do better” during prime minister’s questions (PMQs), following another lacklustre performance in the Commons yesterday.
But the Liberal Democrat leader insisted that if he did not think he could deal with the challenges of his position, in particular the weekly round of verbal jousting with the prime minister, he would not have applied for the job.
“It is a tough job and I never expected it to be an easy job. It’s not tougher than I thought but PMQs poses particular challenges and I am doing my best to meet these challenges,” he told BBC Two’s Daily Politics.
Tony Blair and Conservative leader David Cameron regularly engage in animated discussion over the dispatch box, giving Sir Menzies a difficult act to follow.
He admitted as much, but said: “There is a different approach we can take – physically I am in a different position, I do not have a dispatch box and it means that the way in which I participate necessarily has to be different from the way in which that they do it.”
During yesterday’s session of prime minister’s questions, Sir Menzies once again struggled to make himself heard above the shouts of MPs from both sides of the benches – he often has to begin his questions several times before they allow him to continue.
When Tony Blair does reply, he does with an air of impatience which a parent might employ with a naughty child – something that has left some Lib Dem MPs wondering whether they picked the right man in January’s leadership election.
However, today Sir Menzies insisted: “If I did not think I had the capabilities and the qualities for doing then job then I certainly would not have put myself forward.
“I am aware I would like to do better at PMQs but then I imagine after yesterday that David Cameron felt the same and the prime minister, a week ago, would have felt he would have wanted to do better.”
He went on to stress that politics in Britain was not all about performance in the Commons, saying: “It is terribly important to all of us who lie in the Westminster village, [but] it is not the issue upon which people decide how they are going to cast their votes.”
What mattered was “judgment, policy and commitment”, the QC and former Olympic sprinter insisted, although he accepted: “[PMQs] is a shop window and in this shop window I want to be part of the goods that people want to buy.”
