PMQs sketch: Gloating Tories are already celebrating
Talk about confident. Conservative backbenchers engaged in brazen gloating ahead of tomorrow’s electoral reform referendum.
It had been another rather dull affair.
With the prime minister declining to tell any Labour frontbenchers to “calm down, dear”, as he had done last week, the latest edition of prime minister’s questions was something of a relapse into business as usual.
It was left to a certain Lib Dem backbencher to liven things up in the last two minutes of this week’s instalment. Before then, alas, we had to wade through the usual fare.
Ed Miliband, for all his admirable qualities, continues to find the PMQs mettle hard to grasp.
He is all substance, not style. He is all coffee, not froth. These are usually good things – but not when it comes to the Commons arena on Wednesday lunchtimes. Then, Punch and Judy politics is what is required. We all know which role Miliband is playing.
We were able to make allowances for Gordon Brown, whose distinct lack of charm often saw him retreat to endless lists. These traits were acceptable to him. But the magician Miliband? He spent this lunchtime triumphantly producing statistics out of a hat. His biggest trick was cramming so much policy detail into an extremely tight space.
When he tells Cameron to “take the case” of a poor police constable, who has been forcibly retired and now “forced” to enlist as a volunteer community officer, it sounds like the start of a tiresome infomercial.
Miliband traded the usual insults with David Cameron, who displayed outrageous versatility in accusing the Labour leader of breaking promises, too. Those old habits picked up in five years of opposition die hard. Miliband responded by accusing the PM of being “hazy on the facts”. But Cameron didn’t mind this in the slightest: he merely blocked for five answers, then delivered his prime ministerial soundbite ahead of tomorrow’s local elections.
A relatively humdrum performance, therefore, with backbenchers not contributing much either. This may have had something to do with the fact they were still in the Commons, voting on the finance bill, at 4am this morning. Even Jack Straw was given a fair hearing. Something is clearly up.
With Big Ben bonging 12:30, signalling that the Speaker is about to call the session to a close and dispatch MPs to their lunches, the mood had lightened somewhat.
That did not necessarily mean that the last question of all would be the most interesting – for the response, as much as the answer. Still, that was how it was.
Some politicians are adept at hiding their feelings, at masking their deeper emotions. Bob Russell, the Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, is not one of these.
He sits on the lowest bench on the government side, close to Sir Menzies Campbell. Sometimes he feigns sleep, as he did during the comprehensive spending review, in a desperate attempt to pretend he is not party to the cuts being imposed. Occasionally he passes the time by engaging in banter with Labour MPs sitting opposite. Today, he was in one of his more serious moods.
He stood up slowly. He looked up solemnly. He began with the air of a minor Shakespearean character summing up the tragedy in the final scene.
“At last year’s general election in Essex 49% of the votes cast went to the Conservatives but 95% of the seats went to Conservative MPs,” Russell intoned.
For a brief flicker, the House was motionless. And then came the reaction: open, shameless, gleeful Tory cheering. They know that first-past-the-post provides this kind of discrepancy. They’ve spent the referendum campaign period explaining how the AV vote would be much worse. The referendum has not yet taken place, but such is their confidence that they have already abandoned all pretences to renouncing partisan advantage. Hence the insulting nature of this laughter.
Labour MPs, seeing Russell’s Lib Dem colleagues looking distinctly miffed, yelled out “more!” in response. “Keep going, Bob!” one shouted in mock encouragement. There are not many forms of entertainment available if you’re a Labour MP, but watching the Lib Dems squirm is definitely one of them.
Bob, as we have seen, was in mood for this sort of revelry. “It was an outcome,” he said gravely, “that would embarrass Robert Mugabe”. He got the same response. “Haw haw haw!” The sound of the Conservative parliamentary party collectively guffawing has to be heard to be believed. One particularly high-pitched male guffaw was especially grating.
Russell ploughed on nonetheless. “Other than that Essex is now a Labour-free zone -” more laughter, many more Tory cheers, as journalists wondered whether this question was ever going to come to an end – “does the prime minister think this result was fair?”
He sat down looking distinctly upset. Probably because he has seen the opinion polls which suggest a ‘yes’ victory, that deeply cherished goal in Lib Dem hearts, is unlikely.
Cameron attempted flattery in response. “The point is this, in Colchester, everyone had one vote, it was counted once and he won. I congratulate him,” he tried. It didn’t work. Russell stared back, unmoved.
So the prime minister, turning his head away from the Lib Dem benches, in a pantomime aside to his own party, added: “In other parts of Essex, everyone had one vote, they were all counted once and many of my hon friends won.” He didn’t actually have his hand to his mouth or utter these words in a stage whisper, but the effect was essentially the same.
So the prime minister turned back, and finished, sweetly: “I have to say for all that he brings to this House, what perhaps they lack in number he makes up in stature as a member of parliament for Essex.” A smile flickered around Russell’s mouth.
But the polite laughter from the Lib Dem benches was sounding rather hollow. They had just had their faces rubbed in it.
