PMQs sketch: Backbenches or football terraces?
Are Britain’s MPs determined to drive the reputation of politics in this country into the dirt? This was the worst prime minister’s questions, and the most entertaining, in a while.
Ed Miliband is on paternity leave, which left David Cameron facing Harriet Harman in a rematch of the contests last seen in September. The prime minister was obviously at his most vulnerable on the matter of his ‘vanity’ photographer, who has now been taken off the public payroll and back on the Tory party’s books. This looks like one of Cameron’s most cringeworthy U-turns. But it had been rather swamped by yesterday’s news of the royal wedding. Who cares about spending cuts when the Last of the Windsors has bagged a mate? Nevertheless, today was all about politics. We were waiting for Harriet to pounce.
And we were kept waiting. Some run-of-the-mill exchanges about cuts to police funding kept Cameron busy for five of Harman’s six questions. This was not surprising, as she had been overheard muttering about chief constables in the Palace of Westminster’s corridors on Monday evening. But it was not especially scintillating. “Why don’t we engage in a proper debate?” Cameron asked wearily at one stage. If only! Instead what we got were boring quotes from both sides demonstrating the other party’s hypocrisy on protecting frontline services. “We were absolutely clear in our manifesto!” Harman whined.
More interesting were the antics of Harriet’s two henchmen, shadow chancellor Alan ‘I used to be home secretary’ Johnson and shadow home secretary Ed ‘I have never been chancellor’ Balls. Johnson seemed happy enough, shouting at the prime minister as an undeterred Cameron ploughed on. But Balls kept shaking his head, apparently dismayed by Cameron’s arguments. Our Ed is some sort of biological-metaphysical miracle man, having developed a way of converting exposure to Treasury figures into political energy. Alas, his home affairs portfolio is making him wilt. He looked a shadow of his former self.
What the opposition needed, then, was a bit of perking up. Harman left it until the last minute to go in for the killer blow. She said that Cameron was “posing as a guardian of probity in public finances”, before adding: “He knows a thing or two about posing.” There were as many groans as there were laughs. Harman rallied, demanding an explanation. But Cameron was unfazed. “Even the jokes are lame this week,” he sneered.
At this point backbenchers, who had been relatively quiet until then, suddenly found their voice. Cameron returned serve with some rippers of his own but only had time to mention Gordon Brown and Tony Blair’s villains-in-chief, Damian McBride and Alistair Campbell, before being drowned out by a wall of sound from baying MPs.
“I’ve got a list!” he told Conservatives behind him. “More! More!” they yelled back. Some were getting alarmingly agitated, jumping up in their seats at the prospect of being confronted with more Labour demons. Bruce Forsyth, who only has to inquire of audiences whether they believe something should be ‘higher or lower?’, would be proud.
Out of this din there slowly emerged a challenge from the opposition benches, who had in a broken-up sort of way been bleating on about Cameron’s own spin chief rather ineffectively. Only together were they able to take on the might of the Tories’ scorn. From the midst of the Tory din a slow crescendo of chanting emerged. “Coulson! Coulson! Coulson!” they bellowed. The football terraces had come to the Commons. This was an exhilaratingly new low.
It certainly stopped Cameron in his tracks. But as he stared across in contempt, his thread well and truly lost, the chanting died away, becoming first faded and then downright embarrassing. Like drunken participants in a dying Mexican wave, what had briefly seemed like a good idea now looked agonisingly weak.
At this point Speaker John Bercow stepped in. Having been elected to his post in the wake of the expenses scandal, which forced his predecessor Michael Martin from office, he feels it is his sanctimonious duty to tell MPs where to get off whenever they deviate from Sunday school manners. “It is now time we get back to questions and answers about the policies of the government,” he said slowly and clearly. That, after all, is what prime minister’s questions is all about. It says so on the tin.
Was he really right about the second bit, though? “That is what the public want,” he added, even more slowly. “That is what the public are entitled to get.” If Bercow had his way we would have missed out on the bracingly high levels of absurdity on show this lunchtime. Wouldn’t that have been a shame?
