Esther McVey shows that the Tories are aggressively on message

Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons has long been a battle between the two main parties for the moral high ground, but today Esther McVey, who appeared even more energetic than usual, made that battle just a little bloodier. She scolded Sheila Gilmore for not smiling when she talked about more people in employment and then listed ‘all the good news that is happening’. Then she told Stephen Hepburn that he hadn’t read the figures on the labour market, joking that ‘the honourable gentleman spoke with gusto but that was all he spoke with’. She was quite keen on the word ‘gusto’, actually, praising Nigel Adams for asking a question ‘with such gusto’. And then Labour MP William Bain told her about a young man in his constituency who was desperate for work after being out of work for 18 months, and asked McVey what she had to say to this constituent.