A telling moment in today’s urgent question on the IMF’s economic outlook came when Angela Eagle pointed out the dearth of Tories who’d turned up to hear the Treasury defend its performance. She said:
Despite the minister’s bluster, the benches opposite are empty. They haven’t come in in large numbers to defend the government’s economic, er, results, have they?
Eagle argued that this was because the IMF had offered a ‘devastating forecast’ which ‘laid bare the economic incompetence’. But there’s another reason why the government benches were so quiet. It’s that the Conservative party machinery simply isn’t working very well.
Normally when there is an awkward session looming in the House of Commons, the whips and some Parliamentary Private Secretaries will organise a support group of MPs to come along and make helpful sounds from the green benches.
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