A shift at the whopper-factory<br />

Crack! The sound of the whips lashing Labour MPs into line today was deafening. And the truth didn’t have a prayer. What a draining, depressing, undemocratic spectacle it was to see Labour’s doomed time-servers put in yet another shift at the government’s whopper-factory. Cameron went to the House with a single tactic, to get the PM to admit that Labour must and will cut spending. Did Brown admit it? Fat chance. Instead he insisted that spending was going up. Not just current spending but capital spending too. Up, up up. He hammered home the notion that the Tories will lower spending by ten percent and lower inheritance tax ‘for the few not the many.’

Cameron was dogged, impatient, sometimes exasperated but he masked his impatience with a few decent quips. After the first softball query from a Labour poodle, Cameron observed, ‘Welcome to Prime Minister’s planted questions.’ He mocked Labour’s attempts to hang the ‘Mr Ten Percent’ tag around Andrew Lansley.