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David Cameron's PMQs are nothing short of a disaster, but provide useful clues about Tory Britain



 

I went to Lady Thatcher’s last ever Prime Minister’s Questions in 1990. I remember the experience well, and of course I didn’t actually know it was her last ever PMQs at the time. The thing that struck me was the House of Commons debating chamber is like a TV studio, or film set, or at least seems that way from the public gallery. In a sense it is, as it is a set-piece spectacle for the media, almost as firm a ritual as Coronation St. or EastEnders. That it is supposed to hold the Government to account is not really what most of us are interested in. It’s a barometer of the important issue of the day, whether Ed Miliband can deliver an effective punch, and whether David Cameron will be ‘on the ropes’ or respond with a counter-hook of his own.

From the perspective of the media managers such as Craig Oliver and Nick Robinson, a concern will be how the exchange will be reported on the 6 o’clock news or the 10 o’clock news. There will have been some of us who witness the ex change live, and we will happily provide instantaneous feedback with our hashtag #PMQs. Media commentators will usually give a decisive result, such as “Miliband triumphant” or, rarely these days, “Cameron floored that”. For all his quips about how Ed Miliband “practises” in front of a mirror – and David, the one olds aren’t really your best – Cameron is neurotic that his Party comes across well in the whole performance. Conservatives are, it is reported, even sent memoranda reminding them of the need for barracking and heckling the opposition.

The advantage of Prime Minister’s Questions is of course that questions can be asked of the Prime Minister under parliamentary privilege. Lord Neuberger, former Master of the Rolls and President-Elect of the Supreme Court, and Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, are rightly keen that parliamentary privilege is not abused in the House of Commons. However, it is perhaps worth noting that the content of the answers often are poor in comparison to the question being asked. For example, Debbie Abrahams in her question asks simply, “Can the Prime Minister explain the relationship between Virgin Care donations to the Tory party, the number of Virgin Care shareholders on clinical commissioning group boards and the number of NHS contracts that have been awarded to Virgin Care?” In science, there is often no relationship. That is indeed the null hypothesis for all experiments ever conducted in scientific research, so, strictly speaking, all that David Cameron had to do was provide that there wasn’t significant evidence that there wasn’t no link to support his thesis (if you pardon the double negative). Ian Lavery MP’s question provides another interesting example.

You will notice the sombre mood of the House, as is indeed fitting as this precise theoretically could have happened to any sitting MP of the House of Commons. This is where it is more fitting to think of ‘grading’ PMQs not as a “knockout boxing match”, but a Finals exam script. The default option is a II.1, unless a really good answer merits a First, and a really appalling answer merits a Third. Cameron’s answers are normally in the safe II.1/II.2 category, although he sometimes fails to answer the question altogether. Here the answer is a II.2 really in all honesty, because, while he uses the opportunity to praise a policy which is on the ropes, i.e. the large number of benefit claimants having their original (adverse) decisions overturned on appeal, he in no way addresses the main point. The issue is, of course, put in a strong way that, “austerity kills”, as serious academics address the point in peer-reviewed medical journals whether the austerity agenda of countries including the UK has had an adverse effect on citizens. Take for example this excellent paper from Prof Martin McKee’s laboratory here in London on the “failed experiment” of austerity, in the peer-reviewed ‘Clinical Medicine’, the official journal of the Royal College of Physicians.

Unfortunately, we have all become accustomed to the non-answers given by the Prime Minister during PMQs, but this, in all fairness, is not drastically different from other Prime Ministers in the past, arguably. If the answers do not provide much detail about fine detail, they can possibly throw some light onto the operational smoothness of the running of the Government, and the degree to which they have insight into how seriously the public take their policies seriously. The “Big Society” has had more relaunches than most PR people would like to contemplate, and here is David Cameron trying to shoehorn the relevance and importance of the Big Society into the Tory Britain of David Cameron.

Whilst in no doubt well intentioned, the problem with this answer encapsulates the whole thrust of the main criticism of the Big Society. People have discussed how the Big Society is merely “a cover for cuts”, and it exposes in all its glory how David Cameron has simply has no answer for the failure of market economics. Ed Miliband wishes to advance the notion of a ‘responsible State’ working for the greater ‘public good’, so is able to provide a rebuttal of Cameron’s answer mocking how voluntereeism is not a solution for child malnutrition. This of course plays right into the hands of Labour MPs, and many Labour activists, who feel that Cameron’s Tory Britain has seen a return to Victorian values, in extreme painted as a picture of workhouses and poverty. The implementation of workfare has lent some support to the idea of people being taken advantage of, and the subtext here is that there are some people who have drawn substantial benefit from this culture of ‘using’ labour. The problem with David Cameron’s “something for nothing” jibe is that it can be easily answered with the chaos over workfare, and reports of issues such as George Osborne’s paddock. That large corporates have more of a say in David Cameron’s Britain is a picture which is easy to paint without any effort, such as McKinsey’s being chief “players” in the NHS restructuring (ahead of the BMA, RCN or medical Royal Colleges, for example), or Serco “winning big” for the National Citizen Service contracts. The idea of ‘flexible labour’, i.e. a workforce where job security is nil, could go a long way to explain the record levels of people seemingly in employment (and a equally comparable record number of people with little job security). The problem is that, when Cameron makes another gaffe, legions of Labour activists respond by saying on Twitter, “that’s what he really meant”.

That was the natural conclusion, for example, of this gaffe:

We do not get much of a chance to enter the mindset of David Cameron and his Tory-led Cabinet, and we equally do not have an accurate picture of what is reported from the Tory-led BBC and others, many believe. However, hearing certain things ‘from the horses mouth’ is indeed revealing. If David Cameron had answered his final scripts in the Final Honour School of Philosophy, Psychology and Economics for Brasenose College Oxford, he would have erred into II.2 territory, not because of his lack of preparation and well-researched material, but his simple failure to answer the question. The answers, however, do offer clues for me as to how he thinks about what sort of Society he wants, and what sort of people he values in Society.

PMQs, the Banks and Dave's jokes



And it was again time

The questions were:

1. In opposition, the Prime Minister said, “Where the taxpayer owns a large stake in a bank, we are saying that no employee should be paid a bonus of more than £2000.” Can the Prime Minister update us on the progress of this promise?

2. Let me say – The country is getting fed up with the Prime Minister’s pathetic excuses on the banks. He made a clear promise: no bank bonus over £2000. It’s still on the Conservative website. It’s a promise broken. He can’t answer a question about bankers’ bonuses. Let’s try a question on the bankers’ tax. Can he explain to the British people to explain why he does he think it is fair and reasonable to be cutting taxes in the banks when he is increasing taxes for everyone else?

3. He just needs to look at p.91 Office for Budget Responsibility report published in November last year. Labour’s payroll tax on the banks raised £3.5 bn in addition to the corporation tax that they pay. His corporation levy is just raising. £1.2 bn. In anyone’s terms, that’s raising less money and a tax cut for the banks. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister just admit it?

4. That is the closest we get to an admission from the Prime Minister that the Conservatives are cutting taxes this year. The OBR is very clear. Now – he can’t answer on bonuses or taxes, and so we move on transparency. He should listen to the Business Secretary. We know the Business Secretary is not a man to mess with, he is a man ‘with a nuclear weapon in his pocket, and he’s not afraid to it’. He said, “if you keep things in the dark, you go fungus”. He wasn’t talking about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for once. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister listen to his Business Secretary.

5. You know he’s got no answers when he starts asking me the questions.He is now in the absurd position of being a defender of the banks than ever the banks themselves. Steven Hester, the Chief Executive of RBS went before the Select Committee just before Christmas, said that if the Walker report is implemented, “I would have no problem with it”. The Prime Minister has had eight months to hold them to account. When’s he going to start?

6. And what was he saying during that time? Deregulate the banks more! So this is life in 2011 for Planet Cameron. One rule for the banks, and one rule for anyone else. His Health Minister says in the privacy of his surgery, “I don’t want you to trust David Cameron. He has values I don’t share.” We have a Health Secretary who knows he’s out of touch, and now because of his failure on the banks, we have a country that knows he’s out of touch.

David Cameron’s jokes and insults were bad. This week they revolved around:

  • Wallace and Gromit
  • Alan Johnson not being able to count (5 times)
  • getting Ed Miliband to focus on a television career
  • he just knows that this isn’t working
  • Even the Shadow Chancellor can agree that 2.5 is bigger than 2.3, and 9 is bigger than 2.
  • “No one will ever trust Labour on banking or the economy”

Kerry McCarthy's brilliant Smiths and Morrissey quip in PMQs



Not waving but drowning



At least the British political commentators have been consistently two-faced in their opinions of PMQs. When Ed Miliband ‘does well’ in them, some of these journalists instantaneously take to the airwaves to insist that nobody watches PMQs. When David Cameron does well, it is a sign of brilliant wit, showing that Ed Miliband’s leadership is in its dying days. Thankfully the UK voters are not stupid as to judge the future of this country on a limited pre-prepared stand-up performance from David Cameron. A deserving ‘funny man’ he is, but in terms of where he is leading the country on GDP in 2011 he is a ‘cause for concern’.

In last week’s PMQs, Ed Miliband tried to pull a literary punch with David Cameron by asking whether Cameron was the son of Thatcher, alluding to the Wikileak reported earlier that week from William Hague. David Cameron started his answer laughing, in mock-pity, saying, ‘Oh dear, not waving but drowning”.

I haven’t read a single person pick up on the phrase. In a sense, it was brilliant for David Cameron to refer to a classic poem by Stevie Smith in 1957, called “Not waving, but drowning”; if that’s what he meant. The work, the most famous of Smith’s poems, describes a man whose distressed thrashing in the sea causes onlookers to believe that he is waving to them.

The text of the poem is as follows:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,?
But still he lay moaning:
?I was much further out than you thought?
And not waving but drowning.

??Poor chap, he always loved larking
?And now he’s dead?
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
?They said.

??Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
?(Still the dead one lay moaning)?
I was much too far out all my life?
And not waving but drowning.

Unfortunately, David Cameron has been hoisted by his own petard, when you look carefully about what commentators have in fact said about this poem. One expert, Ingrid Hotz-Davies. has suggested that the “drowning man” is Smith herself, but the poem’s humorous tone masks this plea for help. While David Cameron appears to be laughing at Ed Miliband, his funny words could belie some distress about his own personal professional standing, while this Coalition falls apart day-by-day.

Other commentators have picked up on the “pain behind the smile” theme of the poem. This of course would not be at odds with a man with supposedly good presentation skills inflicting the worst cuts since the Second World War, which could see GDP at alarmingly low levels for the whole of next year.

Dr Shibley Rahman is a member of the Holborn and St Pancras CLP, and also active in the Fabian Society, Compass and Progress.

Shibley's memo to Harriet



Today it will be Nick Clegg. He will wish to emphasize that Labour is in favour of a graduate tax, but you should remind him at that point he used to be as well, even signing a pledge card. When he jokes about how broken promises are nothing compared to illegal activities, perhaps alluding to you and your reversing into a bollard, MPs seeking parliamentary privilege for their expenses scandal, and Phil Woolas, you should then reinforce the perception of him in the mind of a lot of voters, including Liberal Democrat activists. A self-seeking politician who will say anything to do elected. At some stage, he will refer to the mess left behind by Labour, but then you should remind him that he was aware of details concerning the Eurozone during the actual election itself! Best of luck – he’s a very slippery customer!

Letter from Alan Johnson before the CSR



As I post this message from Alan Johnson MP, I am watching a really dreadful performance by David Cameron on the BBC in Prime Minister Questions.

Shibley,??

I wanted to say something to you today, before I deliver our response to the Coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review. George Osborne will insist that there is no alternative to his huge and unnecessary cuts – that is simply not true. There is a better way and that’s where you can help.??

This is about saying, “No. There is an alternative”. ??I’m going to be honest with you, being in opposition does not mean that we can oppose every cut, or pretend to be in government. But it does mean setting out a clear alternative to what we regard as a reckless gamble with growth and jobs – a balanced approach that gets the deficit down without endangering the recovery.??You’re the expert on your local area, or how your family will be affected, so click here to tell us your better way ??Today’s reckless gamble with growth and jobs runs the risk of stifling the fragile recovery. Our alternative will be fair and will recognise these are central to our economic strategy – not a side issue. It will treat the public as intelligent enough to understand that bringing the world economy back from the brink of catastrophe is not the same as paying off a credit card bill.??

We all know that we must tackle the deficit, but we must protect growth, public services, and all of us caught in the middle enduring the most unfair of these cuts, too.??

Alan??

Dr Shibley Rahman is a research physician and research lawyer by training.

Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors

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Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose)



@DAaronovitch directly challenged me as to what I felt was good at Ed’s first ever PMQs. Aaronovitch made the faultless remark that it was the same format; it was business as usual, and just an exchange of quotations and facts, and there had been indeed plus ça change (plus c’est la même chose). I can only only bow to David’s authoritative commentary on this, which, on further reflection, has always been very perceptive to me.

I was struck by the measured unpredictability of Ed Miliband. Firstly, he wrong-footed most of the punters with his choice of shadow cabinet, then he went with child benefit, when most political spectators thought he’d run with the graduate tax, which was left up to the lack-lustre Esther McVey to ask about later in the proceedings. However, the overwhelming verdict from my Labour tweeps that Ed floored David in this first exchange. Ed started with a very straight-forward question.

How many families where 1 parent stays at home will be affected?
15% of families are higher-rate tax-payers“. This was a total answer, and then David asked a question.

Ed reasonably replies: “I may be new to this game, but I’m afraid I ask the questions and he answers them” Ed then asks why the formulation of the system is not fair, and again David did not give an answer to it.

I’m afraid it’s 0 out of 2 on straight answers. We must change the tone of these exchanges, but we must provide straight questions to straight answers“.

The Speaker then asked for calm in the house, but it seems that many people watching the spectacle do in fact enjoy the exchanges; they seem particularly like the new passive aggressive stance by Ed Miliband, while David Cameron was shouting and ranting his head off.

David then came up with his beleaguered, “It’s Labour’s Fault”. Only Nick Clegg seemed to find that convincing. Then he moved onto an antiquated quotation from Alan Milburn, and said, “I love this”, like a third-rate imitation of Margaret Thatcher. The problem is that not many on the Coalition’s side ‘loved it'; they just saw a leader of thee Tory party sinking without trace. Ed Miliband then returned to the point that he simply did not believe his budget reduction plan was at all fair, and again David Cameron gave a really poor performance.

It’s no surprise that all the commentators thought that David Cameron was easily beaten in this first performance, including @TimMontgomerie.

Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors

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