Election pantomime at PMQs
Prime Minister Tony Blair faced Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy in the House of Commons this afternoon for the last time before the general election.
All three leaders were determined to use every word to boost their election campaigns in the last Prime Minister’s Question Time of the current Parliament.
Tony Blair focused on the economy, warning the electorate that a vote for the Conservatives could put everything at risk.
“Economic stability is at risk, your job is at risk, your mortgage is at risk,” he said.
Mr Blair was helped by friendly questions from Labour backbenchers allowing him to launch into a eulogy of Labour’s achievements on health, education and the economy.
Emphasising that the economy will be at the heart of Labour’s election campaign, Mr Blair said: “Labour is the party of economic confidence”.
He added: “In elections the Conservatives used to run on the economy now they run away from it”.
Mr Howard hit back saying that Labour was the party of broken promises, citing the decision to raise national insurance and introduce tuition and top-up fees.
He demanded: “Why should people ever believe a word he says ever again?”
Galvanising the Conservative backbenchers, Mr Howard received a backing chorus of “up” or “down” to his litany of Labour’s record: “Taxes up, crime up, immigration up, waiting times up, truancy up,” – followed by a long list of things that were down.
Mr Blair responded that he was more than happy to contrast their records saying that under Mr Howard and the last Conservative government the poll tax had been introduced, unemployment had risen, crime had risen and the number of the police had been cut.
He said the choice before the British people was of a “fundamental nature”, between Labour’s record and plans or “the clock will be turned back and the very self-same crew they voted to get rid of in 1997 will come back”.
He added that people remembered what it was like before 1997 when friends lost homes and jobs in the recession and the annual winter NHS crisis: “What we will remind them of between now and polling day is what they have now and what is at risk.”
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy chose his party’s key themes of pensions and top- up fees to focus on.
He bemoaned the fact that millions of women still did not receive a pension in their own right and said that top-up fees were saddling young people with thousands of pounds of debt.
Mr Kennedy added that introducing top-up fees was a “direct breach of the last manifesto” and demanded to know “Why should we believe any of the promises made in this manifesto?”
